This study investigated the experiences and survival strategies of informal traders in Mthatha, paying more attention to women. This has included their daily activities to sustain themselves and improve business performance. It has however elaborated on the reasons why people engage themselves in informal trade. Literature review shows that the reasons why people are involved in this form of trade are mainly due to unemployment, lack of education and lack of knowledge. The significance of this form of trade to the economy cannot be underestimated. Emphasis was laid on the challenges encountered by these traders. Such challenges include lack of access to financial facilities such as credit and savings; lack of shelter; harsh weather conditions and harassment and confiscation of their goods by Metro Police. The methodology of this study is primarily based on both quantitative and qualitative methods of research. Several data collection instruments were used. These included questionnaires, participant observation, in-depth interview and photography. Fifty questionnaires were administered to the informal traders and an interview schedule was used to gather information from members of the community and municipality. Description of study site, ethical consideration, limitations and delimitation has equally been presented. Data collected was analyzed using SPSS and manually. The results revealed that informal trading is a survival strategy to a large population of the people in Mthatha and the only source of income. Most of them are breadwinners who support a large number of dependents.

The objective of the thesis is to examine the trading behaviour and characteristics of retail and institutional traders on the Australian Stock Exchange. There are three aspects of these traders that are of particular interest to this study: (1) the information content of their trades, (2) their order placement strategies, and (3) the impact of their trading on share price volatility. Trades made on the basis of private information such as those by institutional traders are found to be associated with larger permanent price changes while trades by uninformed traders such as retail traders are found to be associated with smaller changes. In addition, institutional trades are found to have smaller total price effect compared to retail trades suggesting retail traders incur higher market impact costs. In order to profit from potentially short-lived information advantage, informed traders are expected to place more aggressive orders. The analysis of the order price aggressiveness showed institutions are more aggressive than other traders. In addition, retail traders are found to be less aware of the state of the market when placing aggressive orders. The analysis of the limit order book found significant differences between the contributions of institutional and retail traders to the depth of the limit-order book, with retail standing limit orders further from the market. This is consistent with the conjecture that uninformed traders such as retail traders have greater expected adverse selection costs. The effect of trading by retail and institutional traders on price volatility are also investigated. There is some evidence that retail traders are more active and institutional traders are proportionally less active after periods of high volatility. Also, the effect of the order activity from different trader types on volatility differs depending on the measure of order activity used.

Informal sector participation has been described as a trap associated with impoverishment (Cassim, 1982); as the survivalist responses of marginalised persons with no alternatives (Habib, 2005); yet it has also been described as potentially dynamic (House, 1984). The former conceptions prescribe an identity to informal sector participants, with little consideration given to individual potential and individual action as means to escape impoverishment and a survivalist condition. An entrepreneurial orientation is associated with increased earnings in certain environments according to Lumpkin and Dess (1996), a process orientation that can be learned. Research testing the relationship between entrepreneurship and performance has been problematic due to the different definitions offered by different entrepreneurship scholars (Cunningham and Lischeron, 1991; Lumpkin and Dess, 1996). In this context, entrepreneurial orientation as a construct was utilised to overcome these challenges. Entrepreneurial orientation or certain of its dimensions have been associated with positive effects related to performance (Chow, 2006; Coulthard, 2007; De Clerq and Ruis, 2007; Jantunen, Puumalainen, Saarenketo, and Kylaheiko, 2005) or with negative relationships (Naldi, Nordqvist, Sjőberg and Wiklund, 2007). Innovativeness, competitive aggressiveness, risk taking propensity, autonomy and proactiveness, the dimensions of an entrepreneurial orientation (Lumpkin and Dess, 1996), and the effects of certain contextual factors were tested as to their associations with entrepreneurial performance. Entrepreneurial performance was defined in this context as a construct comprising earnings and continuance satisfaction. In terms of entrepreneurial performance, the contention of Lumpkin and Dess (1996) that an entrepreneurial orientation is associated with learning: the how of entrepreneurship, or the learnable process conception of Stevenson and Jarillo (1990), was also tested by investigating contextual factors and how they shaped an entrepreneurial orientation and contributed to entrepreneurial performance. ii In this context a quantitative investigation of informal sector street traders and providers of street-side services was undertaken using a survey format. The specific relationships influencing entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial performance were investigated. Results contested assumptions that prescribed a theoretically permanent and immutable survivalist orientation to certain informal participants in that education and learning related factors were found to be associated with entrepreneurial orientation and increased earnings. Entrepreneurial orientation was found to be associated with increased earnings along the dimension of risk taking propensity, and higher levels of autonomy were found to be associated with continuance satisfaction. The relationships between entrepreneurial and contextual factors were investigated and insights developed regarding potential street trader upliftment.

The competition for external capital amongst small and developing financial markets has resulted in a growing awareness of the importance of investor protection laws if markets are to be competitive. One particularly important aspect of such laws is the need to control the behaviour of insiders. Insider trading, widely perceived as trading by investors who have an unfair advantage by virtue of access to confidential information, represents a significant threat to market confidence and investors' willingness to invest in the market. For small markets therefore, not controlling such behaviour represents a significant cost in terms of the development of the market and the economy as a whole. However, while insider trading can do significant harm to the market, it also has the potential to be beneficial to the market as a signal of incorrectly priced information. The question becomes therefore how best to balance the advantages and disadvantages of insider trading. Most markets have relied on regulations to control insiders, however, little research has been done to establish if this is effective.This thesis seeks to provide additional evidence with respect to the role of regulation in controlling insider trading. The issue is explored within the context of the New Zealand market where recent legislation, the Securities Market Amendment Act 2002, offers a prime opportunity to seek further understanding on the issue. In particular, four studies focussed on the role of regulation with respect to insider trading are undertaken within this thesis. In the first the impact of the law change on the profitability and informational base of insiders is examined. A significant decline in profitability is observed in addition to evidence of a change in the informational basis of insiders' trades from knowledge of upcoming announcements to short-term market mispricing. The impact of the new law on four aspects of the market is then examined. A significant increase in liquidity is found following the introduction of the new law, as well as significant reductions in the cost of equity, bid-ask spread and return volatility. The law therefore appears to have improved these aspects of the market. The bid-ask spreads were then examined in more depth by observing the impact of the laws on the cost of informed trading. Strong evidence of a decline in the cost of informed trading was observed, along with significant decreases in the proportion of the spread composed of information asymmetry costs. The declines were largest for those firms most prone to insider trading.Lastly, the elements of an effective insider trading regime were investigated by examining the impact of various legal variables on the cost of informed trading and the total spread. The results indicated that stronger laws have resulted in lower spreads and less informed trading costs, and that effective regimes should prevent insiders passing on their information, should rely on financial penalties over criminal sanctions, and should be both enforceable and policed by a strong public regulator. Overall this thesis finds strong evidence that insider trading laws can be effective in controlling the behaviour of insiders, and that well drafted statutory regulations can be of significant benefit to the market.

<p>The master thesis is devoted to an analysis of equilibrium or reaction-function models in illiquidity markets of derivatives. The main equation is a nonlinear equation which is a perturbation of Black-Scholes model. By using analytical methods we study invariant and scaling properties for the considered model.</p>

The master thesis is devoted to an analysis of equilibrium or reaction-function models in illiquidity markets of derivatives. The main equation is a nonlinear equation which is a perturbation of Black-Scholes model. By using analytical methods we study invariant and scaling properties for the considered model.

According to the empirical findings from evolution of liquidity, this dissertation constructs an optimal order submission strategy model within which a mixture of market and limit orders can be submitted by both informed and uninformed traders. In the Stacklberg Game Model, informed traders with short-lived private information are regarded as leaders, and uniformed traders with learning behaviors are referred as followers. Our theoretical findings conclude as follows: Firstly, the order strategies of all traders can be characterized as coming under one of seven regimes, pure market buy orders, a combination of market and limit buy orders, pure limit buy orders, a combination of limit buy and limit sell orders, pure limit sell orders, a combination of market and limit sell orders, and pure market sell orders. Traders will select their optimal trading strategy according to the regime within which their liquidation value falls. Parlour (1998) is a special case of this study. Secondly, an increase (reduction) in liquidation value will result in a non-linear increase in the optimal proportion of market order submissions by buyers (sellers). Thirdly, the probability of submitting limit orders for uniformed traders increases when information traders get large profit from the private information. The extreme case is uniformed traders only submit limit orders. This result is consistent with Foucault (1999). Fourthly, the price interval will be much wider when limit orders are submitted by uniformed traders than by informed traders. The reasons are that uniformed traders have no private information and that they are high risk aversion. Finally, numerical illustrations confirm the reliability of this model.

This paper refers to Ma and Hung(2004) using the amount of the institutional investors to measure the competitions of trading and the order flows of the institutional investors to measure correlations of information. We filter the data on daily basis and divide the data into four groups: high competition and high correlation, high competition and low correlation, low competition and high correlation, and low competition and low correlation. From the measurements of the informed traders¡¦ intraday behavior, we find that in the sample of high competitions of trading, the informed traders trade aggressively to exploit the common private information in the early period; In the middle period, since the common private information has been revealed to the market, the informed traders trade passively to avoid other informed traders knowing his private information; In the later period, the informed trader trade aggressively again to consume their private information before the market close. So, when trading these stocks, uninformed individual investors should avoid entering the market in the early and the later periods because of the high adverse selection cost. Besides, when prior return increases (decreases), the informed traders tend to place buy (sell) orders, indicating the informed traders are momentum traders. Last but not least, we observe in the sample of low competition and low correlation, the foreign investors behave differently in intraday strategy. Given the increasing of prior return, the buy (sell) orders of the foreign investors become passive (aggressive) in the early period, but in the later period, the buy (sell) orders of the foreign investors turn to be more aggressive (passive) with the increasing of prior return. The result may relate to the strategy of proprietary traders. For this reason, when trading these stocks, uninformed individual investors should avoid following the large orders and the momentum strategy in the early period.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-88). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-88). Also available on the Internet.