Directional Liquidity and Geometric Shear in Pregeometric Order Books

Fuente: arXiv
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1. Verfasser: da Cruz, João P.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author da Cruz, João P.
author_facet da Cruz, João P.
contents We introduce a structural framework for the geometry of financial order books in which liquidity, supply, and demand are treated as emergent observables rather than primitive market variables. The market is modeled as a relational substrate without assumed metric, temporal, or price coordinates. Observable quantities arise only through observation, implemented here as a reduction of relational degrees of freedom followed by a low-dimensional spectral projection. A one-dimensional projection induces a price-like coordinate and a projected liquidity density around the mid price, from which bid and ask sides emerge as two complementary restrictions. We show that directional liquidity imbalances decompose naturally into a rigid drift of the projected density and a geometric shear mode that deforms the bid--ask structure without inducing price motion. Under a minimal single-scale hypothesis, the shear geometry constrains the projected liquidity to a gamma-like functional form, appearing as an integrated-gamma profile in discrete data. Empirical analysis of high-frequency Level~II data across multiple U.S. equities confirms this geometry and shows that it outperforms standard alternative cumulative models under explicit model comparison and residual diagnostics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_19369
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Directional Liquidity and Geometric Shear in Pregeometric Order Books
da Cruz, João P.
Trading and Market Microstructure
Physics and Society
We introduce a structural framework for the geometry of financial order books in which liquidity, supply, and demand are treated as emergent observables rather than primitive market variables. The market is modeled as a relational substrate without assumed metric, temporal, or price coordinates. Observable quantities arise only through observation, implemented here as a reduction of relational degrees of freedom followed by a low-dimensional spectral projection. A one-dimensional projection induces a price-like coordinate and a projected liquidity density around the mid price, from which bid and ask sides emerge as two complementary restrictions. We show that directional liquidity imbalances decompose naturally into a rigid drift of the projected density and a geometric shear mode that deforms the bid--ask structure without inducing price motion. Under a minimal single-scale hypothesis, the shear geometry constrains the projected liquidity to a gamma-like functional form, appearing as an integrated-gamma profile in discrete data. Empirical analysis of high-frequency Level~II data across multiple U.S. equities confirms this geometry and shows that it outperforms standard alternative cumulative models under explicit model comparison and residual diagnostics.
title Directional Liquidity and Geometric Shear in Pregeometric Order Books
topic Trading and Market Microstructure
Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.19369