A limit order book is essentially a file on a computer that contains all orders sent to the market, along with their characteristics such as the sign of the order, price, quantity and a timestamp. The majority of organized electronic markets rely on limit order books to store the list of interests of market participants on their central computer. A limit order book contains all the information available on a specific market and it reflects the way the market moves under the influence of its participants. This book discusses several models of limit order books. It begins by discussing the data to assess their empirical properties, and then moves on to mathematical models in order to reproduce the observed properties. Finally, the book presents a framework for numerical simulations. It also covers important modelling techniques including agent-based modelling, and advanced modelling of limit order books based on Hawkes processes. The book also provides in-depth coverage of simulation techniques and introduces general, flexible, open source library concepts useful to readers studying trading strategies in order-driven markets.

We devel op a dynamic modelof anorder-drivenmarket populated bydiscretionary liquidity traders. These tradersmust trade, yet canchoose the type oforder and are fully strategic in their decision. Traders differ by their impatience: less patient traders are likely to demand liquidity, more patient traders are more likely to provide it. Three equilibrium patterns are obtained - the pattern is determined by three parameters: the degree of impatience of the patient traders, which we model as the cost of execution delay in providing liquidity; their proportion in the population, which determines the degree of competition among the liquidity providers; and the tick size, which is the cost of the minimal price improvement. Despite its simplicity, the model generates a rich set of empirical predictions on the relation between market parameters, time to execution, and spreads. We argue that the economic intuition of this model is robust, thus its main results will remain in more general models.

This book brings together the latest research in the areas of market microstructure and high-frequency finance along with new econometric methods to address critical practical issues in these areas of research. Thirteen chapters, each of which makes a valuable and significant contribution to the existing literature have been brought together, spanning a wide range of topics including information asymmetry and the information content in limit order books, high-frequency return distribution models, multivariate volatility forecasting, analysis of individual trading behaviour, the analysis of liquidity, price discovery across markets, market microstructure models and the information content of order flow. These issues are central both to the rapidly expanding practice of high frequency trading in financial markets and to the further development of the academic literature in this area. The volume will therefore be of immediate interest to practitioners and academics. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Journal of Finance.

"The process by which securities are traded is very different from the idealized picture of a frictionless and self-equilibrating market offered by the typical finance textbook. This book offers a more accurate and authoritative take on this process. The book starts from the assumption that not everyone is present at all times simultaneously on the market, and that participants have quite diverse information about the security's fundamentals. As a result, the order flow is a complex mix of information and noise, and a consensus price only emerges gradually over time as the trading process evolves and the participants interpret the actions of other traders. Thus, a security's actual transaction price may deviate from its fundamental value, as it would be assessed by a fully informed set of investors. The book takes these deviations seriously, and explains why and how they emerge in the trading process and are eventually eliminated. The authors draw on a vast body of theoretical insights and empirical findings on security price formation that have come to form a well-defined field within financial economics known as "market microstructure." Focusing on liquidity and price discovery, the book analyzes the tension between the two, pointing out that when price-relevant information reaches the market through trading pressure rather than through a public announcement, liquidity may suffer. It also confronts many striking phenomena in securities markets and uses the analytical tools and empirical methods of market microstructure to understand them. These include issues such as why liquidity changes over time and differs across securities, why large trades move prices up or down, and why these price changes are subsequently reversed, and why we observe temporary deviations from asset fair values"--

Written by one of the leading authorities in market microstructure research, this book provides a comprehensive guide to the theoretical work in this important area of finance.