Private Information and Trading Behavior: KOSPI200 Futures Markets Open Access

The study examines whether the trader’s order imbalance for KOSPI200 futures can explain their informativeness. I use daily positions of various types of futures market participants such as foreign investors, institution investors, and individual investors to identify informed traders. The positions of foreign investors, institution investors and individual investors are correlated with returns in KOSPI200 futures markets, but there is some debate as the interpretation of such a relationship. I find that the foreign investors’ position is informative to investors, supporting the private information view. In terms of trader’s behavior, foreign traders follow contrarian strategies and trade with higher information than individual and institutional traders, who trade as momentum. Also, I considering regime switching effects in this frameworks. In threshold regression models, I found a different behavior during futures return expansions and contractions or volatility expansions and contractions.