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Understanding why market manipulation is conducted, under which conditions it is the most profitable and investigating the magnitude of these practices are crucial questions for financial regulators. Closing price manipulation induced by derivatives’ expiration is the primary subject of this thesis. The first chapter provides a mathematical framework in continuous time to study the incentive to manipulate a set of securities induced by a derivative position. An agent holding a European-type contingent claim, depending on the price of a basket of underlying securities, is considered. The agent can affect the price of the underlying securities by trading on each of them before expiration. The elements of novelty are at least twofold: (1) a multi-asset market is considered; (2) the problem is solved by means of both classic optimisation and stochastic control techniques. Both linear and option payoffs are considered. In the second chapter an empirical investigation is conducted on the existence of expiration day effects on the UK equity market. Intraday data on FTSE 350 stocks over a six-year period from 2015-2020 are used. The results show that the expiration of index derivatives is associated with a rise in both trading activity and volatility, together with significant price distortions. The expiration of single stock options appears to have little to no impact on the underlying securities. The last chapter examines the existence of patterns in line with closing price manipulation of UK stocks on option expiration days. The main contributions are threefold: (1) this is one of the few empirical studies on manipulation induced by the options market; (2) proprietary equity orderbook and transaction data sets are used to define manipulation proxies, providing a more detailed analysis; (3) the behaviour of proprietary trading firms is studied. Despite the industry concerns, no evidence is found of this type of manipulative behaviour.

The "received" view in the finance literature is that hedgers are uninformed traders who use futures to fix future price movements and prevent losses from unexpected and unknown fluctuations in the purchase or sale price of a commodity. In this paper, we examine transactions executed by large traders in a relatively illiquid deliverable agricultural (grain) futures market where most transactions are executed by hedgers. We provide evidence that the price impact of large buyer-initiated transactions is permanent, consistent with the proposition that they are executed by traders perceived to be informed. We also provide evidence that the price impact of large buyer-initiated trades is greatest around announcements related to the underlying commodity-corroborating our conclusion that they are executed by traders perceived to be informed. This evidence is contrary to the "received" view in the literature that hedgers are uninformed, and implies that large long hedgers in agricultural futures markets are informed

This paper examines, using proprietary ASX data containing institutional holdings,if institutional investors exit en mass prior to announcements of financial distress. Evidenceindicates that while some institutional investors exit the stock, the withdrawal is gradual, com-mencing approximately 115 days prior to event. This is driven by active institutional investorsreacting to the release of the financially distressed companies' last publicly released financialreports. There is no significant decline in institutional holdings before announcements; mostinstitutional investors hold financially distressed shares through to failure. There is evidence thatthe lack of disclosure drives the increase in information asymmetry prior to company failure.

This paper examines the efficiency of the Treasury Bond futures market in Australia. We provide a comprehensive explanation of the method used to price, and evaluate efficiency of the 3 and 10 Year Australian Treasury Bond Futures contracts, against underlying bond baskets. Results indicate that the futures contracts exhibit minimal variation from their theoretical value. The average mispricing equates to 1.96 basis points for 3 Year and 1.19 basis points for 10 Year government bond futures contracts. However, during some periods (including the financial crisis of 2008), the bond futures contracts exhibit greater mispricing. Consistent with prior literature, we find a decreasing pattern of mispricing towards expiry, with the futures contract yields and average forward yields of the underlying bonds converging towards expiry. Further analysis reveals that volatility and time to expiry exhibit a significant positive relationship with the absolute level of mispricing.

This study measures the magnitude of execution costs of outright options and options which constitute strategies (“strategy‐linked options”), and examines if any differences in execution costs between these two groups is attributable to differences in market making costs on the Australian Options Market. Results reveal that execution costs for tailor‐made strategy‐linked options are greater than outright options. Also, this study provides evidence that the disadvantage of tailor‐made strategy‐linked options over outright options is driven by market makers’ hedging costs.

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between competition, liquidity provision, and market structure. By examining the entry and exit of market makers in the Australian Options market, this study empirically analyses the issue of market maker competition. Results indicate that market maker entry depends on a broad range of profit, risk and market concentration characteristics, but free market maker movement does not explicitly result in a competitive market structure. This study also finds that the degree of market concentration additionally affects the marginal impact of market maker entry (exit), but the effect is significantly more pronounced for the most liquid classes of options. The implication of this finding is pertinent to market regulators since market maker competition may not necessarily contribute to enhancing market quality for less liquid securities.

This paper examines the order flow diversion hypothesis using crosslisted Singapore Exchange (SGX) futures contracts to test if the existence of an off-shore market causes the order migration of futures volume from the domestic to foreign markets. Using structural equation systems estimation based on daily turnover, we observe that a 10% increase in the turnover of the SGX traded Nikkei 225 leads to an increase of 6.6% for the Nikkei 225 traded on the OSE. Further examination of the cross-listed Nifty and the MSCI-Taiwan Index futures provide similar evidence of a positive and significant relationship. We also observe that off-shore index futures have a positive and significant impact on domestic component stocks' turnover. Evidence in this study supports the rejection of the order-flow hypothesis, and suggests that a mutually beneficial relationship exists between cross-border exchanges

This paper examines the impact of the submission of undisclosed limit orders and their short‐term information content compared to similar disclosed orders. We also examine whether the abolishment of broker identifiers from trading screens on the Australian Securities Exchange affects the short-term information content of various order types. Results indicate that aggressively submitted undisclosed orders, compared to similar disclosed-limit orders, lead to significantly higher short-term price movements. The removal of broker identifiers does not provide consistent evidence of any changes in the short-term information content of large dollar volume orders. This suggests that disclosed orders provide more information to the market than do broker identifiers.