Examination is made of the relative contributions to price discovery of the floor and electronically traded euro FX and Japanese yen futures markets and the corresponding retail on-line foreign exchange spot markets. GLOBEX electronic futures contracts provide the most price discovery in the euro; the on-line trading spot market provides the most in the Japanese yen. The floor-traded futures markets contribute the least to price discovery in both the euro and the Japanese yen markets. The overall results show that electronic trading platforms facilitate price discovery more efficiently than floor trading. Futures traders may also extract information from on-line spot prices.
We can infer from bidfask quotations and transaction prices that where options contracts are traded under a competitive open-outcry market-making system, the options and futures markets are dynamically efficient. Ex-ante analysis shows that potential arbitrage opportunities disappear within five minutes. Transaction price data understate both the frequency and magnitude of arbitrage opportunities that are signaled by bidfask quotes. Quotes stale fast, so opportunities are short-lived and some of the arbitrage opportunities are deceptive. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that bidfask quotes provide valuable trading signals to arbitrageurs. Profitability from exploiting the quotes is negatively related to execution delay and execution risk.
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