Over-the-counter (finance) | EPFL Graph Search

Over-the-counter (OTC) or off-exchange trading or pink sheet trading is done directly between two parties, without the supervision of an exchange. It is contrasted with exchange trading, which occurs via exchanges. A stock exchange has the benefit of facilitating liquidity, providing transparency, and maintaining the current market price. In an OTC trade, the price is not necessarily publicly disclosed. OTC trading, as well as exchange trading, occurs with commodities, financial instruments (including stocks), and derivatives of such products. Products traded on traditional stock exchanges, and other regulated bourse platforms, must be well standardized. This means that exchanged deliverables match a narrow range of quantity, quality, and identity which is defined by the exchange and identical to all transactions of that product. This is necessary for there to be transparency in stock exchange-based equities trading. The OTC market does not have this limitation. Parties may agree on

Trading mechanisms in over-the-counter markets

Sebastian Vogel

In the chapter

When to Introduce Electronic Trading Platforms in Over-the-Counter Markets?'' An equilibrium in a market is determined in which traders have the choice between using an electronic platform with a request-for-quote protocol or calling a dealer directly. The main takeaway is that platforms increase the bargaining power of traders with search costs, thereby increasing their market participation and potentially also welfare. Another friction that affects trading in OTC markets are informational frictions. market participants may learn from trading activity on platforms and trade on that information in other trading venues. The interplay between an electronic trading platform in the dealer-to-customer market and the interdealer market is analysed in the chapter

Electronic Trading in OTC Markets vs. Centralized Exchange.'' In that chapter, a two-tiered OTC market is compared with a fully centralized market, showing that informed traders may prefer the two-tiered structure in order to benefit from their information. This ability of decentralized OTC markets to deal with asymmetric information is also a major benefit of OTC markets compared to exchange markets in welfare considerations. In the chapter ``Informed Traders and Dealers in the FX Forward Market,'' it is analyzed whether such informational frictions exist, whether dealers are able to mitigate those by charging different markups to different clients and whether we behavior consistent with the alleviation of informational frictions.

EPFL2020

Essays in Financial Economics

Julien Arsène Blatt

I started my PhD studies in August 2014 with a strong desire to push my own limits without knowing precisely the areas I wanted to cover in detail. To me, it was clear that I was interested by many different fields, however, I was particularly concerned with behavioural finance and with the fact that simple actions could be followed by strong market reactions. It is in this context that my supervisor, Prof. Semyon Malamud, advised me to derive/measure the consequences of the large acceptance of the RiskMetrics variance model on the price of financial assets. Indeed, this method has the advantage of providing a simple formula to estimate the volatility of any financial asset, but above all, has been used significantly by practitioners in the financial industry. The question then arises, ``Is there a link between this method and the price of financial assets?'' In order to answer this question, I have designed a simple portfolio optimization model in which agents update volatility estimates with the RiskMetrics formula. Thanks to this simple idea my first project was born and I quickly realized that I could design an elegant model. With this framework I have been able to establish the existence of a risk factor of which the economic literature was unaware. Moreover, the empirical strategy allows me to estimate the relative risk aversion coefficient independently from established procedures. Importantly, my estimates are in line with the ones obtained with these (standard) approaches. Meanwhile, I was also interested in a topic that covers a large part of all trades and is known as ``over-the-counter markets''. These markets are characterized by their high level of decentralization. Indeed, every transaction is settled directly between a buyer and a seller. In these markets, the only way to secure a trade is to find another agent that is willing to take the counter-party. I became very interested in a series of books and articles that were modeling financial assets traded under these conditions. Hence, I have started to work in this field by solving different models. I was particularly interested in understanding how the price of assets traded with this constraint would react under stressful situations, that is, when agents had to liquidate their investments. After a trial and error process, I found that my model generated puzzling results. Indeed, this model made predictions that were against traditional wisdom. Above all, that model predicted that a large level of capital mobility could impair welfare. Hence, I had eventually found the link between all the fields I wanted to cover in my thesis, where I debate the optimal allocation of capital under different types of frictions. While my first article treats the case of a centralized market with an agent who forecasts volatility using a particular method, the second article concerns how capital flows across markets when agents are subject to searching frictions. My third article is based on the second and discusses the interaction between innovation and the competition between firms supplying the same products. This article focuses on how capital is used by firms to innovate and how firms grow.

EPFL2019

Signaling in OTC Markets: Benefits and Costs of Transparency

Alberto Mokak Teguia

We provide a theoretical rationale for dealer objections to ex post transparency in over-the-counter markets. Disclosure of the terms of a transaction conveys information possessed by the dealer about the asset quality and reduces the dealer's rents when she disposes of the inventory in a second transaction. We show that costly signaling in a transparent market benefits investors through lower spreads and higher volume. Dealers may also gain from transparency despite lower spreads when potential gains from trade are small or adverse selection is high, because in those circumstances higher volume offsets smaller spreads for dealer profits.

CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS2020

Essays in Financial Economics

Julien Arsène Blatt

EPFL2019