Price clustering in financial markets is pervasive. Using transaction‐level data from the world's largest financial market, this study is the first to examine price clustering behavior in the foreign exchange swap market. In addition to existing hypotheses, we investigate new determinants of price clustering including the expected return, contract liquidity, and trader's identity. The results support both negotiation and price resolution hypotheses. We find a positive effect from the level of expected return on price clustering. Markets with greater liquidity experience reduced clustering. Transactions involving domestic banks have less clustering suggesting an information advantage over foreign banks.

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Foreign Exchange, Microstructure, Price Clustering, F31, G15,

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We use a natural experiment resulting from the 1997 Securities and Exchange Commission rule mandating a change in the order‐handling rules (OHR) for all NASDAQ stocks to test whether secondary market structure affects initial public offering (IPO) underpricing. We find that the increase in liquidity that the OHR represent led to a decrease in underpricing for cold NASDAQ IPOs, suggesting that when liquidity is lowest, changes in market liquidity display a negative relation to initial returns.