Flavors of Index Arb
Consider a few scenarios:
These four scenarios is what the four quadrants in Fig. 1 below correspond to. The plot shows the number of trades for DAX40 constituents on Xetra in the same (upper half) and in the opposite (lower half) direction as a preceding trade for the DAX future (FDAX) on Eurex.
The horizontal axis represents time since an order for the DAX future (FDAX) was received by the exchange ("FDAX t3a"). The time labeled "FDAX t9d" is when the exchange sends out the resulting trade. The length of the interval between these varies from event to events. This is why times are shown in relative terms in the left half of the plot.
Any events in the left half cannot have been reactions to the FDAX trade. Either they had a common external trigger or the same participant targeted both markets simultaneously.
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Starting from a trade in the FDAX, we start counting trades in the DAX40 constituents and note their timestamp and side relative to the trigger. The dark blue are is the temporal distribution of the first DAX40 trade. The lighter shades of blue represent successive trades.
The upper left quadrant represents scenario #1 (trades in the same direction, DAX40 cannot be a reaction), the upper right quadrant is scenario #2 (DAX40 trade is a reaction to the FDAX trade), the lower right quadrant is scenario #3 (hedging trade as a reaction), and the lower left quadrant, finally, represents scenario #4 (the classical basis/index arb trade).
There are a few subtleties to the plot:
(a) The thickness of the vertical grey line is 2720 ns. If participants reacted instantaneously to seeing a trade in the future then we would see a reaction on the right edge of the thin grey line. And for trigger/reactions within Eurex one does observe reactions very close to this theoretical limit. But here reactions come with a significant delay. This has to do with the physical setup of the venues in the datacenter.
(b) Related to this: the reactions for trades in the opposite directions are delayed more than trades in the same direction. One hypothesis could be that participants only send out hedging orders upon receiving a fill. The private fill, however, comes after the trade in the public data (by roughly 10 μs). In theory, participants do not have to wait on the private fill. The public trade (ExecutionSummary message) includes enough information for the participant to unambiguously infer his fill.
#eurex #xetra #dax #dax40 #equitytrading #futurestrading #quantitativeresearch #lowlatency #arbitrage
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10 个月a) From t3a to t9a, the count of trades in both sides gradually increase with timeflow, is it also consistent with your previous article, saying that there're traders who anticipate the future price's move and send orders just before the market data came out？ b) The private fill comes after the trade in the public data by roughly 10 μs, is it intended or...? And actually for what? To my knowledge, in some crypto markets, the private fill comes before the public data, so that makers could get the latest price faster than those who only subscribe market data. This makes sense, since the makers provide liquidity and take the risk of adverse selection.