Latency and Liquidity Risk

33 Pages Posted: 10 Aug 2019 Last revised: 13 Oct 2021

See all articles by Álvaro Cartea

Álvaro Cartea

University of Oxford; University of Oxford - Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance

Sebastian Jaimungal

University of Toronto - Department of Statistics

Leandro Sánchez-Betancourt

Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford; University of Oxford - Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance

Date Written: August 7, 2019

Abstract

Latency (i.e., time delay) in electronic markets affects the efficacy of liquidity taking strategies. During the time liquidity takers process information and send marketable limit orders (MLOs) to the exchange, the limit order book (LOB) might undergo updates, so there is no guarantee that MLOs are filled. We develop a latency-optimal trading strategy that improves the marksmanship of liquidity takers. The interaction between the LOB and MLOs is modelled as a marked point process. Each MLO specifies a price limit so the order can receive worse prices and quantities than those the liquidity taker targets if the updates in the LOB are against the interest of the trader. In our model, the liquidity taker balances the tradeoff between the costs of missing trades and the costs of walking the book. In particular, we show how to build cost-neutral strategies, that on average, trade price improvements for fewer misses. We employ techniques of variational analysis to obtain the price limit of each MLO the agent sends. The price limit of a MLO is characterized as the solution to a class of forward-backward stochastic differential equations (FBSDEs) driven by random measures. We prove the existence and uniqueness of the solution to the FBSDE and numerically solve it to illustrate the performance of the latency-optimal strategies.

Keywords: Marked point processes, high-frequency trading, algorithmic trading, latency, forward-backward stochastic differential equations

Suggested Citation

Cartea, Álvaro and Jaimungal, Sebastian and Sánchez-Betancourt, Leandro, Latency and Liquidity Risk (August 7, 2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3433739 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3433739

Álvaro Cartea

University of Oxford ( email )

Mansfield Road
Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 4AU
United Kingdom

University of Oxford - Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance ( email )

Eagle House
Walton Well Road
Oxford, Oxfordshire OX2 6ED
United Kingdom

Sebastian Jaimungal

University of Toronto - Department of Statistics ( email )

100 St. George St.
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3
Canada

HOME PAGE: http://http:/sebastian.statistics.utoronto.ca

Leandro Sánchez-Betancourt (Contact Author)

Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford ( email )

Andrew Wiles Building
Woodstock Road
Oxford, Oxfordshire OX2 6GG
United Kingdom

University of Oxford - Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance ( email )

Eagle House
Walton Well Road
Oxford, Oxfordshire OX2 6ED
United Kingdom

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