We study the profitability of traders in two fully electronic and highly liquid markets: the Dow and Standard & Poor׳s 500 e-mini futures markets. Using unique information that identify counterparties to a transaction, we show and seek to explain the fact that the network pattern of trades...

The recent financial crisis has highlighted the fragility of the US financial system under several respects. In this paper the properties of a summary index of financial fragility, timely capturing changes in credit and liquidity risk, distress in the mortgage market, and corporate default risk,...