Price Discovery Function of Large Trades and the Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns

Abstract:     
The price discovery function measures the private information revealed in prices through trades. As informed traders prefer large trades, the price discovery function of large trades (VECIN), estimated from a vector error correction model of cointegrated price series of large and small trades, measures the extent of information asymmetry between traders. VECIN has a strong impact on future stock returns, and its power to predict stock returns is stronger than any of the well-known return predictors we have considered. A VECIN spread portfolio of NYSE/Amex stocks that goes long in the top VECIN quintile and short in the bottom VECIN quintile earns a Fama-French (1993) risk-adjusted return of 0.99% per month. Adding the VECIN spread portfolio to the Fama-French three factors triples the Sharpe ratio of the ex-post tangency portfolio from 0.24 to 0.71. Further tests suggest that mispricing cannot fully explain the strong pricing impact of VECIN.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 64

Keywords: Price Discovery, Information Risk, Large Trade, VECM

working papers series