{"title":"Retail investors, COVID and the quality of the New Zealand Stock Exchange","authors":"Aaron Gilbert, Alireza Tourani-Rad","doi":"10.1177/03128962241246675","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we investigate the impact of the influx of retail investors during the COVID-19 lockdowns on the New Zealand Stock Exchange on the efficiency of the market. On one hand, these investors bring added liquidity to the market, which generally improves market efficiency, and on the other hand, many of these investors were inexperienced retail traders who are often viewed as noise traders harming market efficiency. This natural experiment allows us to investigate the impact of retail investors. Using a sample of 99 New Zealand Exchange listed companies, we collect intraday price and quote data from 1 January 2019 to 24 March 2021. We compute a range of market quality measures across three categories: trading costs, price efficiency and speed of information incorporation. Our results clearly indicate that the influx of retail investors has reduced market quality; in particular, we observe more price predictability and information being impounded into prices more slowly.JEL Classification: C10, G14, G20","PeriodicalId":47209,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Management","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Australian Journal of Management","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/03128962241246675","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"BUSINESS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In this article, we investigate the impact of the influx of retail investors during the COVID-19 lockdowns on the New Zealand Stock Exchange on the efficiency of the market. On one hand, these investors bring added liquidity to the market, which generally improves market efficiency, and on the other hand, many of these investors were inexperienced retail traders who are often viewed as noise traders harming market efficiency. This natural experiment allows us to investigate the impact of retail investors. Using a sample of 99 New Zealand Exchange listed companies, we collect intraday price and quote data from 1 January 2019 to 24 March 2021. We compute a range of market quality measures across three categories: trading costs, price efficiency and speed of information incorporation. Our results clearly indicate that the influx of retail investors has reduced market quality; in particular, we observe more price predictability and information being impounded into prices more slowly.JEL Classification: C10, G14, G20
期刊介绍:
The objectives of the Australian Journal of Management are to encourage and publish research in the field of management. The terms management and research are both broadly defined. The former includes the management of firms, groups, industries, regulatory bodies, government, and other institutions. The latter encompasses both discipline- and problem-based research. Consistent with the policy, the Australian Journal of Management publishes research in accounting, applied economics, finance, industrial relations, political science, psychology, statistics, and other disciplines, provided the application is to management, as well as research in areas such as marketing, corporate strategy, operations management, organisation development, decision analysis, and other problem-focuses paradigms.