Uncovering Market Disorder and Liquidity Trends Detection

Abstract: The primary objective of this paper is to conceive and develop a new methodology to detect notable changes in liquidity within an order-driven market. We study a market liquidity model which allows us to dynamically quantify the level of liquidity of a traded asset using its limit order book data. The proposed metric holds potential for enhancing the aggressiveness of optimal execution algorithms, minimizing market impact and transaction costs, and serving as a reliable indicator of market liquidity for market makers. As part of our approach, we employ Marked Hawkes processes to model trades-through which constitute our liquidity proxy. Subsequently, our focus lies in accurately identifying the moment when a significant increase or decrease in its intensity takes place. We consider the minimax quickest detection problem of unobservable changes in the intensity of a doubly-stochastic Poisson process. The goal is to develop a stopping rule that minimizes the robust Lorden criterion, measured in terms of the number of events until detection, for both worst-case delay and false alarm constraint. We prove our procedure's optimality in the case of a Cox process with simultaneous jumps, while considering a finite time horizon. Finally, this novel approach is empirically validated by means of real market data analyses.