Time and the Process of Security Price Adjustment

Abstract

This paper delineates the link between the existence of information, the timing of trades, and the stochastic process of prices. We show that time affects prices, with the time between trades affecting spreads. Because the absence of trades is correlated with volume, our model predicts a testable relation between spreads and normal and unexpected volume, and demonstrates how volume affects the speed of price adjustment. Our model also demonstrates how the transaction price series will be a biased representation of the true price process, with the variance being both overstated and heteroskedastic.