Liquidity Proxies Research Articles

Liquidity on the Budapest Stock Exchange 2007-2010

The Budapest Liquidity Measure (BLM) was created by the Budapest Stock Exchange (BSE) in 2005 to provide the market with a simple index which assists market participants in making investment decisions by showing how liquid the single securities and the entire market is at the moment. Liquidity is calculated as the sum of the adverse price movement created by the transaction of the investors and the liquidity premium to be paid for the transaction. These two factors together are also referred to as the implicit cost or indirect cost of trading. The extent of this cost depends on the current state of the order book. Trading also incurs explicit or direct costs, e.g. brokerage fees and commissions, stock exchange fees and taxes (Kutas-Vegh [2005]). These costs are not included in the BLM as these can easily be identified and quantified, and the aim of the BLM is to measure the effect of implicit costs not measured earlier. Our study presents the methodology of the BLM and compares it to the other liquidity proxies used in the market.

The relationship between liquidity and returns on the Chinese stock market

The goal of this paper is to examine the impact of liquidity on returns on the Shanghai stock exchange (SHSE) and the Shenzhen stock exchange (SZSE). We proxy liquidity with the trading volume (TV), the turnover rate (TR), and the trading probability (TP). Using daily data for the period January 1997 and December 2003, we find mixed results on the relationship between liquidity and returns. There is greater evidence of liquidity having a negative effect on returns on the SHSE than on the SZSE. However, this evidence is not robust across the three proxies for liquidity that we use.

An Index-Based Measure of Liquidity

The liquidity shocks of '08-'09 revealed that measures of liquidity risk being used in most financial institutions turned out to be woefully inadequate. The construction of long-short portfolios based on liquidity proxies introduces errors such as extraneous risk factors and hedging error. We develop a new measure for liquidity risk using exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that attempts to minimize this error. We form a theoretically-supported measure that is long ETFs and short the underlying components of that ETF, i.e., long and short a similar set of underlying securities with the same weights. Pricing discrepancies between the long and short positions are driven by liquidity differences between the ETF and its underlying components. Constructing theoretically supported liquidity risk factors in a number of markets, we undertake several tests to validate our new liquidity metric. The results show that our illiquidity measure is strongly related to other measures of illiquidity, explains bond index returns, and reveals a systematic illiquidity component across fixed-income markets.

Convertible Bonds and Stock Liquidity

This paper shows that the probability of exercise of convertible bonds issued against a firm’s stock directly affects the liquidity of the stock itself. Using the ratio of absolute stock return to its dollar volume as a proxy for stock liquidity I demonstrate that there is a direct and positive relationship between conversion probability and stock liquidity while controlling for firm size, book to market equity value and firm beta. I describe the effect of unlisted convertible debt on the liquidity of listed firms in the US, Korea and Singapore. The effects of conversion probability on stock liquidity are less pronounced for smaller firms, which helps explain time series variations in the liquidity premiums for smaller firms over time. The relationship between convertibles and stock liquidity is mainly attributed to the expected increase in the number of shares available for trade upon conversion and the expected change in the capital structure of the firm.

Monetary Policy and its Impact on Stock Market Liquidity: Evidence from the Euro Zone

The recent financial crisis has been characterized by unprecedented monetary policy interventions of central banks with the intention to stabilize financial markets and the real economy. This paper sheds light on the actual impact of monetary policy on stock liquidity and thereby addresses its role as a determinant of commonality in liquidity. To capture effects both at the micro and macro level of stock markets, we apply panel estimations and vector autoregressive models. Our results suggest that an expansionary monetary policy of the European Central Bank leads to an increase of stock market liquidity in the German, French and Italian markets. These findings are robust for seven proxies of liquidity and two measures of monetary policy.

Rapid Credit Growth: Boon or Boom-Bust?

Episodes of rapid credit growth, especially credit booms, tend to end abruptly, typically in the form of financial crises. This paper presents the findings of a comprehensive event study focusing on 99 credit booms. Loose monetary policy stances seem to have contributed to the build-up of credit booms across both advanced and emerging economies. In particular, domestic policy rates were below trend during the pre-peak phase of credit booms and likely fuelled macroeconomic and financial imbalances. For emerging economies, while credit booms are associated with episodes of large capital inflows, international interest rates (a proxy for global liquidity) are virtually flat during these periods. Therefore, although external factors such as global liquidity conditions matter, and possibly increasingly so over time, domestic factors (especially monetary policy) also appear to be important drivers of real credit growth across emerging economies.

Rapid Credit Growth: Boon or Boom-Bust?

Episodes of rapid credit growth, especially credit booms, tend to end abruptly, typically in the form of financial crises. This paper presents the findings of a comprehensive event study focusing on 99 credit booms. Loose monetary policy stances seem to have contributed to the build-up of credit booms across both advanced and emerging economies. In particular, domestic policy rates were below trend during the pre-peak phase of credit booms and likely fuelled macroeconomic and financial imbalances. For emerging economies, while credit booms are associated with episodes of large capital inflows, international interest rates (a proxy for global liquidity) are virtually flat during these periods. Therefore, although external factors such as global liquidity conditions matter, and possibly increasingly so over time, domestic factors (especially monetary policy) also appear to be important drivers of real credit growth across emerging economies.

Liquidity Crunch in Late 2008: High-Frequency Differentials Between Forward-Implied Funding Costs and Money Market Rates

The US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have adopted a number of measures, including aggressive policy rate cuts, to ease the liquidity crunch in the financial markets following the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Using high frequency spot and forward foreign exchange and interest rate quotes that are potentially executable for the period surrounding the 2008 global financial turmoil, this study examines the variations of intraday funding liquidity across the global financial markets that span different time zones. Moreover, the paper also tests how and to what extent policy actions undertaken by central banks affect the dynamics of market liquidity conditions. Similar to Hui et al. (2009), the paper uses the differential between the US dollar interest rate implied by the covered interest rate parity condition and the corresponding US dollar interest rate as a proxy for the liquidity (or the lack of it) in the US dollar money market. The study focuses on the EUR/USD exchange rate and compares the most stressful crisis period with other relatively less stressful periods. The intraday funding liquidity condition during the most tumultuous period shows that the pressures in the demand for US dollars through foreign exchange and forward markets spilled over to the Asian markets. The paper also examines how policy announcements by the central banks affect the dynamics of market liquidity. The study employs autoregressive models to capture the potential effects of monetary policy announcements on both the mean and volatility of the liquidity proxy. The empirical results show that the coordinated cuts of policy rates failed to stimulate lending in the short-term US money market, whereas the uncapped currency swap lines offered by the Federal Reserve to other central banks succeeded in easing the liquidity condition in the market. The policy is more effective and persistent for the very short end of the money market.

Noise as Information for Illiquidity

We propose a broad measure of liquidity for the overall financial market by exploiting its connection with the amount of arbitrage capital in the market and the potential impact on price deviations in US Treasurys. When arbitrage capital is abundant, we expect the arbitrage forces to smooth out the Treasury yield curve and keep the dispersion low. During market crises, the shortage of arbitrage capital leaves the yields to move more freely relative to the curve, resulting in more “noise.” As such, noise in the Treasury market can be informative and we expect this information about liquidity to reflect the broad market conditions because of the central importance of the Treasury market and its low intrinsic noise – high liquidity and low credit risk. Indeed, we find that our “noise” measure captures episodes of liquidity crises of different origins and magnitudes and is also related to other known liquidity proxies. Moreover, using it as a priced risk factor helps explain cross-sectional returns on hedge funds and currency carry trades, both known to be sensitive to the general liquidity conditions of the market.

The Emerging Markets’ Investor Sentiment Composite Index: A Test on Bursa Malaysia

During the recent global stock market crash in 2007 to 2008, the MSCI World Index of developed markets fell approximately 50 percent in value; hence the contagion effect to the emerging markets was inevitable that it fell further. In early 2009, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index has fallen 66 percent from peak to trough, which had plunged deeper than the stock markets of developed countries. It would be of no surprises for academics and practitioners to link the local stock markets behaviours to other regional stock markets as one of the contributions in their research papers and write ups. Theoretical wise, it has for decades, a vast number of explanations been offered in attempts to explain the behaviour of asset prices from the perspective of investor’s psychology. The theory of noise trader by Black (1986) and Trueman (1988) initiated the attempt by modeling that noise trading no longer exists as a temporarily shock or short term movement in asset prices as previously discussed in Efficient Market Hypothesis. This paper introduces the investor sentiment composite index constructed specifically for the emerging markets, in particular the Bursa Malaysia. The composite index is constructed comprising of liquidity proxy, the information IPOs and advancer decliners ratio. Unlike the study done on developed market, this paper introduces a measurement of liquidity that has been used in study of liquidity on emerging market by Amivest (1997). A proxy known as oversubscription ratio is taken from the IPO literature is also added that signifies investors demand in the market. Bursa Malaysia is expected to closely represent the emerging markets as to study the impact investor sentiment has on the returns and also the contribution to the bull and bear stock market defined by the leading indicator KLCI.

Price dispersion in OTC markets: A new measure of liquidity

In this paper, we model price dispersion effects in over-the-counter (OTC) markets to show that, in the presence of inventory risk for dealers and search costs for investors, traded prices may deviate from the expected market valuation of an asset. We interpret this deviation as a liquidity effect and develop a new liquidity measure quantifying the price dispersion in the context of the US corporate bond market. This market offers a unique opportunity to study liquidity effects since, from October 2004 onwards, all OTC transactions in this market have to be reported to a common database known as the Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE). Furthermore, market-wide average price quotes are available from Markit Group Limited, a financial information provider. Thus, it is possible, for the first time, to directly observe deviations between transaction prices and the expected market valuation of securities. We quantify and analyze our new liquidity measure for this market and find significant price dispersion effects that cannot be simply captured by bid–ask spreads. We show that our new measure is indeed related to liquidity by regressing it on commonly-used liquidity proxies and find a strong relation between our proposed liquidity measure and bond characteristics, as well as trading activity variables. Furthermore, we evaluate the reliability of end-of-day marks that traders use to value their positions. Our evidence suggests that the price deviations from expected market valuations are significantly larger and more volatile than previously assumed. Overall, the results presented here improve our understanding of the drivers of liquidity and are important for many applications in OTC markets, in general.

Do liquidity and sampling methods matter in constructing volatility indices? Empirical evidence from Taiwan

This paper proposes four methods by which to sample option prices using proxies for liquidity—1-, 2-, 3-, 7-, and 8-day rollover rules—for option trades in order to construct volatility index series. Based on the sampling method using the average of all midpoints of bid and ask quote option prices, the volatility indices constructed by one-minute tick data have less missing data and are at least as efficient in volatility forecasting as the method suggested by the CBOE. In addition, based on different rollover rules, illiquidity in Taiwan's options market does not lead to substantial errors in the forecasting effectiveness of the volatility indices. Finally, the forecasting ability of VIX based on different sampling methods is found to be superior to that of VXO in Taiwan.

Is Information Risk Really a Determinant of Security Returns? Evidence from TORQ

Using a sample of NYSE securities, this article investigates whether there is an information risk premium in securities return. The author uses two proxies for information— probability of information trading (PIN) and institutional trading—and determines how those impact securities return after controlling for other known risk factors. Intraday transactions data from TORQ are used to compute PIN, denoting information content in trades from the maximum-likelihood estimates of the parameters of a mixture model. The main finding is that only beta and volatility, denoted by price inverse and standard deviation of returns, respectively, are the primary determinants of security returns, but PIN and institutional trading, proxies for information risk, are not priced in security returns. Beta and volatility are derived from market prices and hence fall under price risk. Turnover, a likely proxy for both liquidity and price risk, is also a significant determinant of return. Contrary to the findings of Easley et al. [2002], this article shows that information risk is not a significant determinant of security return. <b>TOPICS:</b>VAR and use of alternative risk measures of trading risk, statistical methods, exchanges/markets/clearinghouses

The Determinants of Stock and Bond Return Comovements

We study the economic sources of stock‐bond return comovements and their time variation using a dynamic factor model. We identify the economic factors employing a semistructural regime-switching model for state variables such as interest rates, inflation, the output gap, and cash flow growth. We also view risk aversion, uncertainty about inflation and output, and liquidity proxies as additional potential factors. We find that macroeconomic fundamentals contribute little to explaining stock and bond return correlations but that other factors, especially liquidity proxies, play a more important role. The macro factors are still important in fitting bond return volatility, whereas the “variance premium” is critical in explaining stock return volatility. However, the factor model primarily fails in fitting covariances. (JEL G11, G12, G14, E43, E44) Stock and bond returns in the United States display an average correlation of about 19% during the post-1968 period. Shiller and Beltratti (1992) underestimate the empirical correlation using a present value with constant discount rates, whereas Bekaert, Engstrom, and Grenadier (2005) overestimate it in a consumption-based asset pricing model with stochastic risk aversion. Yet, these models generate realistically positive correlations using economic state variables.

New evidence on the relation between stock liquidity and measures of trading activity

The goal of this paper is to examine two empirical issues regarding stock liquidity: (1) to what degree are different liquidity proxies correlated? and (2) how are different liquidity proxies related to stocks' trading characteristics? Answers to these questions will help us better understand whether there are common sources of liquidity. This has considerable implications for studying stock liquidity, since selecting an appropriate proxy for liquidity is an important issue in empirical research design. Using data from the Australian equity market, our results confirm prior research that stocks' trading characteristics are important determinants of liquidity. Though the relationships are generally consistent with expectations, some proxies do react differently to certain trading characteristics. This finding is consistent with the contention that liquidity is a multifaceted concept and each alternative proxy may only capture a certain aspect of liquidity.

Safe Haven Currencies*

We study high-frequency exchange rates over the period 1993-2008. Based on the recent literature on volatility and liquidity risk premia, we use a factor model to capture linear and non-linear linkages between currencies, stock and bond markets as well as proxies for market volatility and liquidity. We document that the Swiss franc and Japanese yen appreciate against the US dollar when US stock prices decrease and US bond prices and FX volatility increase. These safe haven properties materialise over different time granularities (from a few hours to several days) and non-linearly with the volatility factor and during crises. The latter effects were particularly discernible for the yen during the recent financial crisis.

What Are the Best Liquidity Proxies for Global Research?

Liquidity plays an important role in global research. We identify high quality liquidity proxies based on low-frequency (daily) data, which provide 1,000X to 10,000X computational savings compared to computing high-frequency (intraday) liquidity measures. We find that: (1) Closing Percent Quoted Spread is the best monthly percent-cost proxy when available, (2) Amihud, Closing Percent Quoted Spread Impact, LOT Mixed Impact, High-Low Impact, and FHT Impact are tied as the best monthly cost-per-dollar-volume proxy, (3) the daily version of Closing Percent Quoted Spread is the best daily percent-cost proxy, and (4) the daily version of Amihud is the best daily cost-per-dollar-volume proxy.

Systematic liquidity risk and asset pricing: evidence from London Stock Exchange

This study examines whether systematic liquidity risk is priced on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). We use the proportional quoted bid-ask spread, Amihud's (2002) market illiquidity ratio, and turnover rate as liquidity proxies. In contrast to the US studies, we do not find evidence that systematic liquidity risk is priced on the LSE.

Funding Liquidity, Market Liquidity and TED Spread: A Two-Regime Model

We investigate the effect of market liquidity on equity-collateralized funding accounting for endogeneity. Theory suggests market liquidity can affect funding liquidity in stabilizing and destabilizing manners. Using the average fee on stock loans as a proxy for equity-collateralized funding liquidity, we confirm the existence of these two regimes over the period of July 2006 – May 2011. Furthermore, we show that we can separate the two regimes using the yield spread of Eurodollars over T-bills (TED spread) and that a regime switch seems to occur near a TED spread of 48 basis points.

The Time-Varying Systematic Risk of Carry Trade Strategies

This paper suggests a factor model for carry trade strategies where the regression coefficients are allowed to depend on market volatility and liquidity. Empirical results on daily data from 1995 to 2008 show that a typical carry trade strategy has much higher exposure to the stock market and also more mean reversion in volatile periods - and that FX market volatility is a priced risk factor. The findings are robust to various extensions, including using more currencies and other proxies for volatility and liquidity (VIX, TED and a bid-ask spread).