Market microstructure studies how prices actually form: the dynamics of limit order books, the economics of market making, price impact of large orders, and the information content of order flow. It is the layer where trading strategy meets market plumbing, and it matters to anyone whose backtest assumes fills at mid-price.
Two branches dominate this collection. The theoretical branch models order books with queueing theory and stochastic control — mathematically rich, but check whether the model’s assumptions (Poisson arrivals, constant spreads) survive contact with data. The empirical branch measures impact curves, adverse selection, and liquidity patterns from tick data; its perennial weakness is dataset access, so pay attention to which venue and period a result comes from before assuming it generalizes.
Related hubs: High-Frequency Trading & Execution, Statistical Arbitrage, Crypto Markets & DeFi.
Explainers from the corpus: VWAP prediction: methods and benchmarks →
We consider a sequential decision-making setting where, at every round $t$, a market maker posts a bid price $B_t$ and an ask price $A_t$ to an incoming trader (the taker) with a private valuation for one unit of some asset. If the trader’s valuation is lower than the bid price, or higher than the a
This is the third paper in a series concerning the game-theoretic aspects of position-building while in competition. The first paper set forth foundations and laid out the essential goal, which is to minimize implementation costs in light of how other traders are likely to trade. The majority of res
We investigate the well-posedness in the Hadamard sense and the absence of price manipulation in the optimal execution problem within the Almgren-Chriss framework, where the temporary and permanent impact parameters vary deterministically over time. We present sufficient conditions for the existence
This paper develops a mathematical framework for building a position in a stock over a fixed period of time while in competition with one or more other traders doing the same thing. We develop a game-theoretic framework that takes place in the space of trading strategies where action sets are tradin
Market making refers to a form of trading in financial markets characterized by passive orders which add liquidity to limit order books. Market makers are important for the proper functioning of financial markets worldwide. Given the importance, financial mathematics has endeavored to derive optimal
In the contemporary financial landscape, accurately predicting the probability of filling a Request-For-Quote (RFQ) is crucial for improving market efficiency for less liquid asset classes. This paper explores the application of explainable AI (XAI) models to forecast the likelihood of RFQ fulfillme
We develop static and dynamic approaches for hedging of the impermanent loss (IL) of liquidity provision (LP) staked at Decentralised Exchanges (DEXes) which employ Uniswap V2 and V3 protocols. We provide detailed definitions and formulas for computing the IL to unify different definitions occurring
We consider a central trading desk which aggregates the inflow of clients’ orders with unobserved toxicity, i.e. persistent adverse directionality. The desk chooses either to internalise the inflow or externalise it to the market in a cost effective manner. In this model, externalising the order flo
The skew-stickiness-ratio (SSR), examined in detail by Bergomi in his book, is critically important to options traders, especially market makers. We present a model-free expression for the SSR in terms of the characteristic function. In the diffusion setting, it is well-known that the short-term lim
This paper establishes that conditioning the probability of execution of new orders on the self-generated historical trading information (HTI) of a trading strategy is a necessary condition for a statistical trading edge. It is shown, in particular, that, given any trading strategy S that does not u
This paper studies the market structure impact of cheaper and faster chains on the Uniswap v3 Protocol. The Uniswap Protocol is the largest decentralized application on Ethereum by both gas and blockspace used, and user behaviors of the protocol are very sensitive to fluctuations in gas prices and m
Convex optimisation has provided a mechanism to determine arbitrage trades on automated market markets (AMMs) since almost their inception. Here we outline generic closed-form solutions for $N$-token geometric mean market maker pool arbitrage, that in simulation (with synthetic and historic data) pr
This paper explores the utility of agent-based simulations in realistically modelling market structures and sheds light on the nuances of optimal dealer strategies. It underscores the contrast between conclusions drawn from probabilistic modelling and agent-based simulations, but also highlights the
We study how to unwind stochastic order flow with minimal transaction costs. Stochastic order flow arises, e.g., in the central risk book (CRB), a centralized trading desk that aggregates order flows within a financial institution. The desk can warehouse in-flow orders, ideally netting them against
We extend a Discrete Time Random Walk (DTRW) numerical scheme to simulate the anomalous diffusion of financial market orders in a simulated order book. Here using random walks with Sibuya waiting times to include a time-dependent stochastic forcing function with non-uniformly sampled times between o
We consider an offline learning problem for an agent who first estimates an unknown price impact kernel from a static dataset, and then designs strategies to liquidate a risky asset while creating transient price impact. We propose a novel approach for a nonparametric estimation of the propagator fr
Market making of options with different maturities and strikes is a challenging problem due to its highly dimensional nature. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that combines a stochastic policy and reinforcement learning-inspired techniques to determine the optimal policy for posting bid-as
The over-the-counter (OTC) market is characterized by a unique feature that allows market makers to adjust bid-ask spreads based on order size. However, this flexibility introduces complexity, transforming the market-making problem into a high-dimensional stochastic control problem that presents sig
We consider the impact of trading fees on the profits of arbitrageurs trading against an automated market maker (AMM) or, equivalently, on the adverse selection incurred by liquidity providers (LPs) due to arbitrage. We extend the model of Milionis et al. [“2022”] for a general class of two asset AM
We present a general framework for modelling the dynamics of limit order books, built on the combination of two modelling ingredients: the order flow, modelled as a general spatial point process, and market clearing, modelled via a deterministic mass transport operator acting on distributions of buy
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