Catching Falling Knives: Speculating on Market Overreaction

Market participants often invest in order to acquire information that pertains to the market itself (e.g. order flow) rather than to fundamentals. This enables them to infer more information from past trades. I show that agents trading on such information, typically high-frequency traders, decrease the likelihood of short-lived mispricings by trading against price pressure. In the long-run however, such countervailing speculation amounts to signal-jamming, slowing down price discovery. These traders insure the market against short-run crashes by "catching falling knives". Higher adverse selection and slower convergence form the "premium" paid by other market participants. JEL Classification: D82, G0, G12, G14

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