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Information of Liquidity Deeply in the Order Book

Although LOBSTER has the capability to generate the entire limit order book, it is currently restricted to a maximum of 200 quote level. As a result a frequently asked question is “Why can’t I generate the whole book?” Besides the data size consideration, the main rational behind this decision is that the liquidity deeply in the book is not likely to be informative.

First, algorithmic traders are not likely to react to deep liquidity, because:

  1. the market data feed of most of trading platform in the industry do not provide the full book information, and
  2. it is not optimal for algorithmic trading strategy to react to deep liquidity – Taking advantage of its speed, the algorithm gets enough time to react when the liquidity is showing up close to the market, say in 5 to 20 quote levels. A model taking an action when the liquidity is still hundreds of levels behind the market, disregarding the platform’s low-latency advantage, is clearly sub-optimal (originally, I use adjective “stupid” which is impolite but likely more proper).

Second, the lower frequency traders are incapable to rationally react to deep liquidity, since

  1. most of them do not have the data feed, and
  2. a human being can hardly analyse more than ten level quotes in a timely fashion.

Third, the deep liquidity in book is typically from uninformative sources:

  1. low-frequency traders who lack the capability to monitor the market in real time, and
  2. the market markers who are obligated to quote on both sides but are not willing to trade on either or both sides.

The the above screen shot from Ivo Zeba’s LOBSTER visualisation tool shows the liquidity distribution and price dynamics over a period.

  • Liquidity A was closed monitored and could be potentially informative in its first showing-up in the book. Since it was in low levels, LOBSTER outputted it “on time”.
  •  Liquidity B was in the mid-range in the book, LOBSTER outputted it. But it might not be really informative for price prediction at its first showing-up.
  • Like liquidity B, liquidity C was also very persistent and getting picked-off. It had not been outputted at the time of showing-up. However, LOBSTER did output it early enough for its price impact into the consideration for a meaningful model.
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Optimal order display in limit order markets with liquidity competition

 and Ulrich Horst of Universität Wien and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin published and Article in Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control (April 2015)  with the titel Optimal order display in limit order markets with liquidity competition using LOBSTER data. Abstract:
Order display is associated with benefits and costs. Benefits arise from increased execution-priority, while costs are due to adverse market impact. We analyze a structural model of optimal order placement that captures trade-off between the costs and benefits of order display. For a benchmark model of pure liquidity competition, we give a closed-form solution for optimal display sizes. We show that competition in liquidity supply incentivizes the use of hidden orders to prevent losses due to over-bidding. Thus, because aggressive liquidity competition is more prevalent in liquid stocks, our model predicts that the proportion of hidden liquidity is higher in liquid markets. Our theoretical considerations ares supported by an empirical analysis using high-frequency order-message data from NASDAQ. We find that there are no benefits in hiding orders in il-liquid stocks, whereas the performance gains can be significant in liquid stocks.

 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jedc.2015.05.004