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A Network Simulation of OTC Markets with Multiple Agents

James T. Wilkinson, Jacob Kelter, John Chen, Uri Wilensky

arXiv 3 May 2024 · Econometrics

arXiv:2405.02480 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

We present a novel agent-based approach to simulating an over-the-counter (OTC) financial market in which trades are intermediated solely by market makers and agent visibility is constrained to a network topology. Dynamics, such as changes in price, result from agent-level interactions that ubiquitously occur via market maker agents acting as liquidity providers. Two additional agents are considered: trend investors use a deep convolutional neural network paired with a deep Q-learning framework to inform trading decisions by analysing price history; and value investors use a static price-target to determine their trade directions and sizes. We demonstrate that our novel inclusion of a network topology with market makers facilitates explorations into various market structures. First, we present the model and an overview of its mechanics. Second, we validate our findings via comparison to the real-world: we demonstrate a fat-tailed distribution of price changes, auto-correlated volatility, a skew negatively correlated to market maker positioning, predictable price-history patterns and more. Finally, we demonstrate that our network-based model can lend insights into the effect of market-structure on price-action. For example, we show that markets with sparsely connected intermediaries can have a critical point of fragmentation, beyond which the market forms distinct clusters and arbitrage becomes rapidly possible between the prices of different market makers. A discussion is provided on future work that would be beneficial.

Citation extraction

44
references
65
in-text mentions
44
distinct cited
3
self-citations
9,146
main-text words

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Kyungsik Kim, S. M. Yoon, and K. H. Chang (2004) Power law distributions for stock prices in financial markets, 20040.92843100%
2Missaka Warusawitharana (2016) Time-varying volatility and the power law distribution of stock returns, 20160.92843100%
3Andrei Kirilenko, Albert S Kyle, Mehrdad Samadi, and Tugkan Tuzun (2017) The flash crash: High-frequency trading in an electronic market0.73732100%
4Volodymyr Mnih, Koray Kavukcuoglu, David Silver, Alex Graves, Ioanni… (2013) Playing atari with deep reinforcement learning0.73732100%
5Mark Paddrik, Roy Hayes, William Scherer, and Peter Beling (2017) Effects of limit order book information level on market stability metrics0.64422100%
6Volodymyr Mnih, Koray Kavukcuoglu, David Silver, Andrei A. Rusu, Joe… (2015) Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning0.58531100%
7P. Jefferies, M.L. Hart, P.M. Hui, and N.F. Johnson (2001) From market games to real-world markets0.51121100%
8Gew-rae Kim and Harry M. Markowitz (1989) Investment rules, margin, and market volatility0.51121100%
9Moshe Levy (2008) Stock market crashes as social phase transitions0.51121100%
10R.G. Palmer, W. Brian Arthur, John H. Holland, Blake LeBaron, and Pa… (1994) Artificial economic life: a simple model of a stockmarket0.51121100%

Showing the top 10 of 44 scored citations.