Information asymmetry transmissions between futures and spot markets : evidence from Thailand

Abstract

This research investigates the existence of a lead-lag relationship in information asymmetry between Thailand's futures and spot markets. We use the volatility of order imbalance (VOIB) as an indicator of this asymmetry, concentrating on three investor groups: Foreign Investors (FI), Local Institutions (LS), and Local Investors (LI). Data from TFEX and SET, covering January 2017 to December 2022, was analyzed to identify trading patterns of these investor types. Using vector autoregression (VAR), we examined the connection between variables in the futures and spot markets. We also evaluated the impact of shocks in one market on the other using impulse response functions and variance decomposition.

Our findings showed that local institutional and local investors in Thailand are more linked with informed trading compared to foreign investors. Local investors often access information early and share it with local institutions in spot market. Furthermore, trading patterns in the futures market significantly influence those in the stock market, particularly among local institutional and local investors. This shows that key information in the futures market gets effectively transferred to the spot market. The findings of this study provided empirical support for our hypotheses, which implied the existence of informed traders who have information and investors tend to adjust their trading activities in the futures market prior to making adjustments in the spot markets