Tick size and price diffusion
Gabriele La Spada, J. Doyne Farmer, Fabrizio Lillo

TL;DR
This paper examines how tick size influences price diffusion and market microstructure, revealing that smaller tick sizes increase volatility clustering and affect the explanatory power of the subordination hypothesis.
Contribution
It provides new empirical evidence on the impact of tick size changes on price diffusion and challenges existing explanations for stylized facts in financial markets.
Findings
Tick size affects price return distribution at macro time scales.
Reducing tick size increases volatility clustering.
Subordination hypothesis's explanatory power depends on tick size.
Abstract
A tick size is the smallest increment of a security price. It is clear that at the shortest time scale on which individual orders are placed the tick size has a major role which affects where limit orders can be placed, the bid-ask spread, etc. This is the realm of market microstructure and there is a vast literature on the role of tick size on market microstructure. However, tick size can also affect price properties at longer time scales, and relatively less is known about the effect of tick size on the statistical properties of prices. The present paper is divided in two parts. In the first we review the effect of tick size change on the market microstructure and the diffusion properties of prices. The second part presents original results obtained by investigating the tick size changes occurring at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). We show that tick size change has three effects…
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Taxonomy
TopicsComplex Systems and Time Series Analysis · Financial Markets and Investment Strategies · Market Dynamics and Volatility
