English

Multi-Level Order-Flow Imbalance in a Limit Order Book

Trading and Market Microstructure 2019-10-29 v2 General Finance Statistical Finance

Abstract

We study the multi-level order-flow imbalance (MLOFI), which is a vector quantity that measures the net flow of buy and sell orders at different price levels in a limit order book (LOB). Using a recent, high-quality data set for 6 liquid stocks on Nasdaq, we fit a simple, linear relationship between MLOFI and the contemporaneous change in mid-price. For all 6 stocks that we study, we find that the out-of-sample goodness-of-fit of the relationship improves with each additional price level that we include in the MLOFI vector. Our results underline how order-flow activity deep into the LOB can influence the price-formation process.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1907.06230,
  title  = {Multi-Level Order-Flow Imbalance in a Limit Order Book},
  author = {Ke Xu and Martin D. Gould and Sam D. Howison},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.06230},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

32 pages, 7 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T10:20:35.349Z