English

The slippage paradox

Trading and Market Microstructure 2011-03-14 v1

Abstract

Buying or selling assets leads to transaction costs for the investor. On one hand, it is well know to all market practionaires that the transaction costs are positive on average and present therefore systematic loss. On the other hand, for every trade, there is a buy side and a sell side, the total amount of asset and the total amount of cash is conserved. I show, that the apparently paradoxical observation of systematic loss of all participants is intrinsic to the trading process since it corresponds to a correlation of outstanding orders and price changes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1103.2214,
  title  = {The slippage paradox},
  author = {Steffen Bohn},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1103.2214},
  year   = {2011}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T17:38:14.022Z