The price of liquidity in constant leverage strategies

Abstract

In this paper we develop a formula for the Liquidity Premium of constant leverage strategies (CLS). These financial products are path dependent options where the underlying typically is a hedge fund portfolio. We describe and explain the functionality of CLSs, showing a closed form expression for the price of a CLS on a hedge fund assuming a Geometric Brownian Motion, discrete rebalancing for the hedge fund investment as well as stochastic interest rates. The risk of default before the next rebalancing date leads to a liquidity premium for the CLS which increases with the volatility of the underlying hedge fund portfolio and the leverage of the strategy. An increasing rebalancing period first leads to a higher liquidity premium, however, as the rebalancing period is extended further the liquidity premium begins to shrink again.