Research article

Regulatory reform and trade settlement failures in USA equity markets: Does regulatory reform matter?

  • Received: 20 July 2022 Revised: 26 September 2022 Accepted: 25 October 2022 Published: 31 October 2022
  • JEL Codes: G14, G18, G29, C55

  • Stock trades pass through several phases before completion, from placing an order via a brokerage firm, to the delivery of securities versus payment. This paper sheds light on the later phases of the trading process for equity securities in USA capital markets. In a continuous effort to improve the settlement process, the National Securities Clearing Corporation makes several substantial changes every year to the rules and regulations that govern the settlement process. This paper investigates the impact of rule changes on the efficiency of settlement, based on the volume of shares that failed to deliver from 2004 to 2017. The rule changes are modeled with a dummy variable in a vector autoregressive (VAR) model, where the quantity of fails and market returns are both included in the VAR model as endogenous variables. The results show a considerable impact of rule and regulation changes on the quantity of shares failed to be delivered in time for settlement; especially, the regulations implemented to improve short selling had a statistically significant impact on reducing settlement failures and improving market returns. The finding of this study provides important information for regulators and investors with regard to the settlement process and investment strategies.

    Citation: Muath Asmar, Susanne Trimbath. Regulatory reform and trade settlement failures in USA equity markets: Does regulatory reform matter?[J]. Quantitative Finance and Economics, 2022, 6(4): 537-552. doi: 10.3934/QFE.2022023

    Related Papers:

  • Stock trades pass through several phases before completion, from placing an order via a brokerage firm, to the delivery of securities versus payment. This paper sheds light on the later phases of the trading process for equity securities in USA capital markets. In a continuous effort to improve the settlement process, the National Securities Clearing Corporation makes several substantial changes every year to the rules and regulations that govern the settlement process. This paper investigates the impact of rule changes on the efficiency of settlement, based on the volume of shares that failed to deliver from 2004 to 2017. The rule changes are modeled with a dummy variable in a vector autoregressive (VAR) model, where the quantity of fails and market returns are both included in the VAR model as endogenous variables. The results show a considerable impact of rule and regulation changes on the quantity of shares failed to be delivered in time for settlement; especially, the regulations implemented to improve short selling had a statistically significant impact on reducing settlement failures and improving market returns. The finding of this study provides important information for regulators and investors with regard to the settlement process and investment strategies.



    加载中


    [1] Anand A, Green A (2018) Securities settlements as examples of crisis-driven regulation. Int Rev Law Econ 55: 41–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.irle.2018.03.001 doi: 10.1016/j.irle.2018.03.001
    [2] Asmar M, Ahmad Z (2011) Market microstructure: The components of black-box. Int J Econ Financ 3: 152–159. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijef.v3n1p152 doi: 10.5539/ijef.v3n1p152
    [3] Associated Press (2012) Loss of customer cash at Peregrine after founder's suicide attempt could fuel market flight.
    [4] Bartolini L, Hilton S, McAndrews JJ (2010) Settlement delays in the money market. J Bank Financ 34: 934–945. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2009.10.008 doi: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2009.10.008
    [5] Berlinger E, Dömötör B, Illés F (2019) Anti-cyclical versus risk-sensitive margin strategies in central clearing. J Int Financ Mark Institutions Money 62:117–131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intfin.2019.06.002 doi: 10.1016/j.intfin.2019.06.002
    [6] Biais B, Green R (2019) The microstructure of the bond market in the 20th century. Rev Econ Dynam 33: 50–271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2019.01.003 doi: 10.1016/j.red.2019.01.003
    [7] Burns JR, Anderson JE, Saunders KB, et al. (2017) SEC shortens standard settlement cycle to T+2. J Inv Compl 18: 11–15. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOIC-06-2017-0028 doi: 10.1108/JOIC-06-2017-0028
    [8] Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (1999) Annual Report, New York.
    [9] Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (2004) Annual Report, New York.
    [10] Dickey DA, Fuller WA (1981) Likelihood Ratio Statistics for Autoregressive Time Series with a Unit Root. Econometrica 49: 1057–1072. Available from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1912517
    [11] Donald D (2013) Securities Settlement Systems. In: Gerard Caprio, J., Beck, T., Neal, L., et al., Handbook of Key Global Financial Markets, Institutions, and Infrastructure, 557–564. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-397873-8.00035-9
    [12] Donald DC (2007) The Rise and Effects of the Indirect Holding System-How Corporate America Ceded its Shareholders to Intermediaries. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1017206
    [13] European Central Bank (2011) Settlement Fails Report on Securities Settlement Systems (SSS) Measures to Ensure Timely Settlement. Available from: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/settlementfails042011en.pdf.
    [14] European Central Bank (2019) 3rd CSG workshop on Market Settlement Efficiency. Available from: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/groups/shared/docs/de1de-ami-seco-2019-07-02-item-4.2-outcome-of-the-csg-workshop-on-settlement-efficiency.pdf.
    [15] Fleming M, Garbade K (2002) When the back office moved to the front burner: Settlement fails in the Treasury market after September 11. Econ Policy Rev 8: 35–57.
    [16] Fleming M, Garbade K (2005) Explaining settlement fails. Curr Iss Econ Financ 11: 1–7.
    [17] Garbade KD, Frank MK, Lorie L, et al. (2010) The Introduction of the TMPG Fails Charge for U.S. Treasury Securities. Econ Policy Rev 16: 45–71.
    [18] Guseva Y (2015) Destructive Collectivism: Dodd-Frank Coordination and Clearinghouses. Cardozo L Rev 37: 1693–1772.
    [19] Knieps G (2006) Competition in the Post-Trade Markets: A Network Economic Analysis of the Securities Business. J Ind Compet Trade 6: 45–60. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10842-005-5649-x doi: 10.1007/s10842-005-5649-x
    [20] Li S, Marinč M (2016) Competition in the clearing and settlement industry. J Int Financ Mark Institutions Money 40: 134–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intfin.2015.09.004 doi: 10.1016/j.intfin.2015.09.004
    [21] Madhavan A (2000) Market microstructure: A survey. J Financ Mark 3: 205–258. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1386-4181(00)00007-0 doi: 10.1016/S1386-4181(00)00007-0
    [22] Milne A (2007) The industrial organization of post-trade clearing and settlement. J Bank Financ 31: 2945–2961. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2007.03.002 doi: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2007.03.002
    [23] Mooney Jr CW, Rocks SM, Schwartz RS (1994) An introduction to the revised U.C.C. Article 8 and review of other recent developments with investment securities. Bus Lawyer 49: 1891–1906.
    [24] O'Hara M (1995) Market Microstructure Theory. Blakwell Publishers, USA.
    [25] Panourgias NS (2015) Capital markets integration: A sociotechnical study of the development of a cross-border securities settlement system. Technol Forecast Soc Change 99: 317–338. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2015.02.014 doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2015.02.014
    [26] Phillips PCB, Perron P (1988) Testing for a unit root in time series regression. Biometrika 75: 335–346. https://doi.org/10.1093/biomet/75.2.335 doi: 10.1093/biomet/75.2.335
    [27] Pirrong C (2007) The industrial organization of execution, clearing and settlement in financial markets. Available from: https://www.bauer.uh.edu/spirrong/Clearing_silos.pdf.
    [28] Priem R (2020) Distributed ledger technology for securities clearing and settlement: benefits, risks, and regulatory implications. Financ Innov 6: 11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40854-019-0169-6 doi: 10.1186/s40854-019-0169-6
    [29] Putniņš T (2010) Naked short sales and fails-to-deliver: An overview of clearing and settlement procedures for stock trades in the USA. J Secur Oper Custody 2: 340–350.
    [30] SEC (1968) 34th Annual Report, Washington D.C.
    [31] SEC (1973) 39th Annual Report, Washington D.C.
    [32] Treasury Market Practices Group (2007) Treasury Market Best Practices. Available from: https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/microsites/tmpg/files/TMPG_bestpractices.pdf.
    [33] Trimbath S (2008) Trade settlement failures in US bond markets. Working Paper.
    [34] Trimbath, S. (2020) Naked, Short and Greedy: Wall Street's Failure to Deliver. Spiramus Press (London).
    [35] SEC (2018) NSCC Rulemaking. Available from: https://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/nscc.htm.
    [36] Wittie, Robert A. (1999) Recent Case Law Developments in U.C.C. Article 8 and Investment Securities. Bus Lawyer 54: 1921.
  • Reader Comments
  • © 2022 the Author(s), licensee AIMS Press. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)
通讯作者: 陈斌, bchen63@163.com
  • 1. 

    沈阳化工大学材料科学与工程学院 沈阳 110142

  1. 本站搜索
  2. 百度学术搜索
  3. 万方数据库搜索
  4. CNKI搜索

Metrics

Article views(1936) PDF downloads(257) Cited by(0)

Article outline

Figures and Tables

Tables(4)

Other Articles By Authors

/

DownLoad:  Full-Size Img  PowerPoint
Return
Return

Catalog