Mutual funds that experience large outflows of funds must quickly reduce their asset holdings, which generates sales at significant “fire sale” prices. The authors document the process and show that mutual funds do not mitigate the costs of flowmotivated trading. Thus, liquidity providers earn abnormal returns and the predictability of forced flows provides an incentive to front run the mutual funds.

EQUITY INVESTMENTS Asset Fire Sales (and Purchases) in Equity Markets

This paper investigates market manipulation trading strategies by large traders in a securities market. A large trader is defined as any investor whose trades change prices. A market manipulation trading strategy is one that generates positive real wealth with no risk. Market manipulation trading strategies are shown to exist under reasonable hypotheses on the equilibrium price process. Sufficient conditions for their nonexistence are also provided.

Market Manipulation, Bubbles, Corners, and Short Squeezes

This paper studies a dynamic model of a nancial market with a strategic trader. In each period the strategic trader receives a privately observed endowment in the stock. He trades with competitive market makers to share risk. Noise traders are present in the market. After receiving a stock endowment, the strategic trader is shown to reduce his risk exposure either by selling at a decreasing rate over time, or by selling and then buying back some of the shares sold. When the time between trades is small, the strategic trader reveals the information regarding his endowment very quickly.

Strategic trading in a dynamic noisy market

We investigate the impact of an arbitrageur's activities in an illiquid market, where there is a large distressed trader and a fringe of small traders. Large traders trade strategically considering price impacts of their trades and future uncertainty on market liquidity. Prices are determined endogenously through a dynamic bar-gaining and trading process. We find that equilibrium strategies for large traders vary with their relative bargaining power and the level of uncertainty with respect to market liquidity. When there is no such uncertainty, the arbitrageur does not trade at all. However, when there is even a slight amount of uncertainty over future liquidity, the arbitrageur may want to sell part of her holdings before the distressed trader. Moreover, her incentive to "front-run" increases with the level of uncertainty. In most cases, the arbitrageur will front-run the distressed trader by selling quickly, and rebuild her position later at a lower price. The distressed trader's optimal response is to liquidate quickly, despite a big price decline. We note, however, that the arbitrageur does not front-run when there is little uncertainty over market liquidity, or when market liquidity improves over time. The distressed seller can then trade quickly without disturbing prices dramatically.

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Distressed Sales and Financial Arbitrageurs: Front-running in Illiquid Markets ∗

We investigate a large trader's trading strategies in a decentralized market, in which all traders are subject to type switching. The large trader has pressure to liquidate her position by the end of the horizon to avoid extra holding costs. She faces a trade-off: if she trades quickly, she moves the price too much; if she trades slowly, she may not be able to find counterparties in the market in later periods. We derive subgame perfect equilibria under three different spot market structures. The structures are chosen to show various degrees of competitive bargaining. We show that in each equilibrium the large trader chooses the optimal trading strategy to take into account both the price impact effect and liquidity uncertainty. Thus asset prices are generated endogenously through a dynamic bargaining and trading process and reflect the impact of the large trader's trades. Small traders, who possess little market power, cannot be ignored because their reactions to the large trader's trading strategy jointly determines market liquidity. We show that limiting competitive pricing occurs when there are enough small traders, or there are many trading periods. Illiquidity is generated by the thin market for buyers, and their limited capacity to buy the asset sold by the large trader.

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Dan Liang

Papers

Distressed Sales and Financial Arbitrageurs: Front-running in Illiquid Markets ∗

The Trader's Dilemma: Trading Strategies and Endogenous Pricing in an Illiquid Market