A Bayesian Analysis of Dual Trader Informativeness in Futures Markets

We take a closer look at the question of whether dual traders in futures markets are indeed informed traders. Underpinning this question is the intuition that a dual trader's decision to trade on his own account is not random, but is endogenously determined by his expectations of trading profits related to this decision. We employ a simultaneous equations model with two endogenous variables: (1) the binary decision of own account trading (or not), and (2) the trading profit resulting from his own account trading. Our test of whether dual traders are informed traders comprises of estimating the correlation between the error terms of the two equations in our model, where one error term proxies for a dual trader's unobserved private information and the other captures his abnormal profit. Upon estimating the model, using the Bayesian approach, we find no evidence of significant correlation between a dual trader's private information and his abnormal profit. Overall, dual traders appear to be uninformed traders with distinct trade-related characteristics