Institutional Investors and Stock Market Volatility

Gabaix, Xavier; Gopikrishnan, Parameswaran; Plerou, Vasiliki; Stanley, H. Eugene

doi:10.2139/ssrn.442940

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Institutional Investors and Stock Market Volatility

MIT Department of Economics Working Paper No. 03-30

51 Pages Posted: 11 Sep 2003 Last revised: 1 Jun 2010

See all articles by Xavier Gabaix

Xavier Gabaix

Harvard University - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)

Parameswaran Gopikrishnan

Boston University - Center for Polymer Studies

Vasiliki Plerou

Boston University - Center for Polymer Studies

H. Eugene Stanley

Boston University - Center for Polymer Studies

There are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: October 2, 2005

Abstract

We present a theory of excess stock market volatility, in which market movements are due to trades by very large institutional investors in relatively illiquid markets. Such trades generate significant spikes in returns and volume, even in the absence of important news about fundamentals. We derive the optimal trading behavior of thse investors, which allows us to provide a unified explanation for apparently disconnected empirical regularities in returns, trading volume and investor size.

Keywords: stock market crashes, power law, tail behavior, Levy distribution, market microstructure, behavioral finance, scaling, volume, excess volatility, price pressure

JEL Classification: G10, E44

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Gabaix, Xavier and Gopikrishnan, Parameswaran and Plerou, Vasiliki and Stanley, H. Eugene, Institutional Investors and Stock Market Volatility (October 2, 2005). MIT Department of Economics Working Paper No. 03-30, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=442940 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.442940