Corporate Bond Market Research Articles

The Liquidity Premium in China’s Corporate Bond Market: A Stochastic Liquidity Discount Approach

China’s bond market has been ranked third globally; however, China’s corporate bonds are significantly less liquid than its stocks. Liquidity risk is an important component in China’s corporate bond spreads. In this paper, we propose a stochastic liquidity discount factor model to evaluate the liquidity risk premium and its term structure in China’s corporate bond market. The Monte Carlo simulation technique is used to quantify the impact on the liquidity premium of various liquidity factors: the liquidity level, liquidity volatility, liquidity shock, and the liquidity elasticity. Our findings conclude that the liquidity level is the most significant component of a liquidity premium. The impact on the liquidity premium of other liquidity factors is all conditional on the liquidity level. In addition, the impact of liquidity shocks and volatility is also subject to the market’s equilibrium mechanism. Further, the term of a bond affects the premium both directly and indirectly through its influence on a bond’s liquidity.

DeepPricing: pricing convertible bonds based on financial time-series generative adversarial networks

Convertible bonds are an important segment of the corporate bond market, however, as hybrid instruments, convertible bonds are difficult to value because they depend on variables related to the underlying stock, the fixed-income part, and the interaction between these components. Besides, embedded options, such as conversion, call, and put provisions are often restricted to certain periods, may vary over time, and are subject to additional path-dependent features of the state variables. Moreover, the most challenging problem in convertible bond valuation is the underlying stock return process modeling as it retains various complex statistical properties. In this paper, we propose DeepPricing, a novel data-driven convertible bonds pricing model, which is inspired by the recent success of generative adversarial networks (GAN), to address the above challenges. The method introduces a new financial time-series generative adversarial networks (FinGAN), which is able to reproduce risk-neutral stock return process that retains the unique statistical properties such as the fat-tailed distributions, the long-range dependence, and the asymmetry structure etc., and then transit to its risk-neutral distribution. Thus it is more flexible and accurate to capture the dynamics of the underlying stock return process and keep the rich set of real-world convertible bond specifications compared with previous model-driven models. The experiments on the Chinese convertible bond market demonstrate the effectiveness of DeepPricing model. Compared with the convertible bond market prices, our model has a better convertible bonds pricing performance than both model-driven models, i.e. Black-Scholes, the constant elasticity of variance, GARCH, and the state-of-the-art GAN-based models, i.e. FinGAN-MLP, FinGAN-LSTM. Moreover, our model has a better fitting capacity for higher-volatility convertible bonds and the overall convertible bond market implied volatility smirk, especially for equity-liked convertible bonds, convertible bonds trading in the bull market, and out-of-the-money convertible bonds. Furthermore, the Long-Short and Long-Only investment strategies based on our model earn a significant annualized return with 41.16% and 31.06%, respectively, for the equally-weighted portfolio during the sample period.

Impact of venture capital holding on firm life cycle: Evidence from IPO firms

This paper examines the impact of VC ownership beyond the IPO listing on important and consequential corporate decisions in a firm's lifetime. We find that VC funds delay the initiation of dividends by approximately two years, delay the use of external growth strategies, and postpone introduction to the corporate bond market. These results are consistent with the view that VC funds extend the growth phase of the firm. We show that their presence at the time of these decisions leads to positive stock price reactions, suggesting that they provide a certification effect that signals continued growth opportunities, and that VC certification is not limited to the IPO listing.

Trade price clustering in the corporate bond market

PurposeIn this paper, the authors document the existence of price clustering in the US corporate bond market.Design/methodology/approachUsing a sample of 8,422,593 corporate bond trades in 2014, the authors find that over 18% (1,522,284 trades) of all bond trades end in a clustered price, defined as a price ending in 00, 25, 50, or 75.FindingsOverall, the authors find that both bond rating category and risk, as measured by standard deviation of prices, play a role in price clustering; speculative grade bonds account for the majority of clustered prices. Clustered prices are more likely to have higher coupon rates, higher prices, and higher standard deviations of price than bonds with non-clustered prices. Regardless of size, both buy and sell dealer trades with customers (relative to interdealer trading) lead to an increase in price clustering. Dealers appear to use clustered prices when purchasing from and selling to institutions and, therefore, may use a clustered price to insulate themselves from the risk of asymmetric information. Additionally, the prevalence of clustered prices for retail-sized dealer sell trades suggests that dealers exercise dealer power over retail-sized traders.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the literature on price clustering by examining trade price clustering of corporate bonds. It is different from previous papers on price clustering in equities. Given that bonds tend to be priced off of yield, it is unusual that trade prices cluster. It also demonstrates what kind of bonds cluster and with which customers dealers trade at clustered prices. It parallels other research in demonstrating dealer power over retail-sized traders.

Liquidity dimensions in the U.S. corporate bond market

We examine the role of five liquidity dimensions in the U.S. corporate bond market from a broad set of liquidity proxies. Based on the observed different level of liquidity shown by investment-grade and high-yield bonds, we analyze the ability of several liquidity proxies and dimensions to classify bonds within these two main credit rating classes. Our findings show that, at the individual level, all tightness-based liquidity metrics outperform the other measures. In this way, a few proxies measuring transaction costs can help detect high-yield bonds whose liquidity behaves similarly to that of investment-grade bonds. At the dimension level, we find that the theoretical separation into liquidity dimensions is empirically corroborated, but the joint consideration of all of them only brings a slight improvement in results.

Implied Volatility Changes and Corporate Bond Returns

Corporate bonds with large increases in implied volatility over the past month underperform those with large decreases in implied volatility by 0.6% per month. In contrast to existing studies that show implied volatility changes carry information about fundamental news, our evidence suggests that implied volatility changes contain information about uncertainty shocks to the firm. Our results are consistent with the notion that informed traders with new information about firm risk prefer to trade in the option market and the corporate bond market underreacts to this information. This paper was accepted by Haoxiang Zhu, finance. Funding: We thank the Canadian Derivatives Institute for financial support. J. Cao and X. Zhan acknowledge generous financial support of the Research Grant Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [Grants GRF 14501720, 14500919]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4379 .

Does state ownership affect rating quality? Evidence from China's corporate bond market

The existing literature found that state ownership generally boosts bond ratings but ignores the implications for rating quality. Using China's corporate bonds issued from 2008 to 2018, we find that bonds issued by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have relatively poorer rating quality than their non-SOE peers, as supported by the SOE ratings' weaker predictive power for future downward rating events. Importantly, the SOE ratings' poorer prediction performance is partly because of rating inflation; only relatively overrated SOE bonds contain less relevant information in ratings but not nonoverrated SOE bonds. This asymmetry in rating quality is prominent in the case of a local controlling government or when the SOE bonds are rated in booms wherein the incentive to inflate ratings is stronger. The evidence is consistent with a government guarantee induced rating bias where expected government guarantees reduce credit rating agencies' (CRAs') reputational costs and induce CRAs to inflate SOE ratings.

Pricing like things alike: The role of financial statement comparability in bond pricing

Using a modified financial statement comparability measure and data from the Chinese corporate bond market, this paper investigates the role of firm-pair financial statement comparability in bond pricing. Following the notion that financial statement comparability should be an ideal clue to screen benchmarks, we predict that, in the book-building stage, institutional investors tend to benchmark the bond in question to bonds issued by informationally comparable firms to make their quotes of interest rates. The empirical results show that the issue spread of a new bond is convergent to the yield spread of the bonds issued by comparable firms. This phenomenon is more pronounced when the issuing firm has no listed bond to act as a reference and when the comparable firm is covered by more analysts. Further analysis in the secondary market shows that the spreads of two bonds issued by two accounting comparable firms are not only convergent but also highly correlated. Our study provides a better understanding of how a corporate bond is priced and highlights the value of financial statement comparability to bond investors.

Synthetic Options and Implied Volatility for the Corporate Bond Market

AbstractWe synthetically create option contracts on a corporate bond index using CDX swaptions, overcoming the limitations that stem from the lack of traded corporate bond options. Our approach allows us to estimate forward-looking moments concerning the corporate bond market in a model-free manner. By constructing an aggregate volatility measure and the associated variance risk premium, we examine the role of volatility risk in the corporate bond market. We highlight that the ex ante conditional second and higher moments we estimate from synthetic corporate bond options carry important implications for credit risk models, providing an extra basis for testing their validity.

Dependence structure and dynamic connectedness between green bonds and financial markets: Fresh insights from time-frequency analysis before and during COVID-19 pandemic

This paper examines the interdependence between green bonds and financial markets in the time-frequency domain by utilizing the multivariate wavelet approach and dynamic connectedness through combining Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD) with Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) spillover framework. The findings of wavelet multiple correlations indicate that the benefits of diversification opportunities are more evident in the short run. The evidence of wavelet multiple cross-correlations reveals that green bonds and financial markets are highly integrated in the long run. The results of the static connectedness framework explain that the direction and magnitude of spillover behave differently across markets. The world stock market is the net spillover transmitter, while the corporate bond market is the net spillover receiver among the selected markets. The green bond market is receiving more but transmitted less volatility in the present study. The evidence on dynamic connectedness measured by the rolling window approach shows that the interconnection between green bonds and financial markets is volatile over time. These pieces of evidence provide implications to global investors having a strong position in the green bonds market in terms of risk management and portfolio decisions.

Experience in developing the corporate bond market in ASEAN+3 countries and lessons for Vietnam

Vietnam is viewed as having a banking-dependent financial system. The population's idle capital is mainly used to serve the investment needs of the economy indirectly through the banking system. Therefore, developing the stock market, particularly the corporate bond market, enables the economy to minimize its dependence on the banking system and generate capital for the economy. Issuing bonds is considered a method of raising money that has a number of advantages, including the ability to mobilize capital from all economic sectors. On the other hand, several comments in the research on promoting long-term capital financing suggest that the issuance of bonds also provides the market and investors with a financial tool, assisting in the diversification of investment portfolios and risk reduction. Developing the corporate bond market is not only in Vietnam but also becomes an urgent task than ever when the domestic, regional and world economies face numerous difficulties stemming from crises. According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), one of the main reasons behind the 1997 Asian financial crisis was the excessive dependence of Asian economies on commercial banks for domestic financing. Asian countries have almost failed to diversify financial sources to finance businesses because these economies mainly rely on banks instead of other financial instruments, in particular. The bond market is still underdeveloped and quite small in size. Moreover, Asian countries need a substantial long-term source of capital (US$750 billion per year 2010–2020) to develop infrastructure connectivity within and between economies in the region. Therefore, the restructuring of the financial system, in which the diversification of capital funding sources, specifically promoting the bond market in general and the corporate bond market in particular, becomes an indispensable need not only of especially in Vietnam but also in Asian countries, especially since the 1997 Thai currency crisis and the 2008 global financial crisis, through the bond market in general and the corporate bond market in particular, sources local and regional capital can be channeled into infrastructure projects and other productive investments over the long term. Having a well-developed local currency bond (including corporate bonds) market can enhance the resilience of domestic financial markets to external shocks and facilitate better intermediation between savings and investment. invest in production in Asian countries, including Vietnam. Therefore, learning about the experience of developing the corporate bond market in a number of countries in the ASEAN+3 region, thereby drawing lessons from experience for Vietnam is critical for the country's development of the corporate bond market.

Over-the-counter market and corporate bond market development

The objective of this paper was to empirically investigate the factors of corporate bond market development for a sample of emerging and developed countries over the period 2008-2017. Here, we used both fixed effect and Prais-Winsten methods to study the determinants of corporate bond market development. We document a negative and significant relationship between primary market issuance and the over-the-counter (OTC) secondary corporate bond market that can be explained by the inefficiency of the OTC corporate bond market and the lack of trade transparency for this trading venue. We suggest that these microstructure elements of the OTC secondary market harm the corporate bond market development and thus discourage corporate bonds issuance. Furthermore, we provide strong evidence of the relationship between economic growth, domestic credits, corruption and the issuance of the domestic corporate bond market.

Informed Trading and the Dynamics of Client-Dealer Connections in Corporate Bond Markets

Using a unique non-anonymous dataset, covering virtually all secondary market trades in the UK corporate bond market, we show that clients outperform when they trade with more dealers. The effect is stronger for informationally sensitive clients (holding CDS positions on the issuer), assets (high-yield bonds), and during informationally intensive days (macro/rating announcements). The results are consistent with clients varying the number of dealers they trade with to conceal private information. Various tests support our information-based interpretation, ruling out alternative explanations related to uninformed demand and supply. Identifying clients who simultaneously trade in government and corporate bonds reveals that the informational role of connections is larger and more persistent in the corporate bond market. Using a Kyle (1989)-type model, we show that both the degree of inter-dealer competition and the magnitude of private information could, in theory, explain the strength of the performance-connection relation. The empirical evidence supports the mechanism related to the magnitude of private information, while the inter-dealer competition channel is rejected by the data.

Liquidity, Credit Risk, and Their Interaction on the Spreads in China’s Corporate Bond Market

This paper investigates the impact of multidimension liquidity, credit risk, and the interaction between liquidity and credit risk on corporate bond spreads based on a large transaction data set from July, 2006 to June, 2016, including the monthly data of 3716 bonds in China. Our main findings reveal that liquidity premiums are the main parts of corporate bond spreads. The interaction between liquidity and credit risk plays a significant role in determining corporate bond spreads. In addition, the differences between the interbank market and the exchange market have a significant impact on corporate bond spreads in normal period, and the interaction between liquidity and credit risk has an enhanced impact on corporate bond spreads during financial crisis. We also find that the interaction between liquidity and credit risk will increase with the increase of liquidity risk and credit risk and it is a time‐varying dynamic process.

Corporate Bond Pricing Model with Interaction between Liquidity and Credit Risk

This study derives a liquidity and credit risk‐adjusted capital asset pricing model and investigates the model using the data set in China's corporate bond market. Our research shows that the channels through which liquidity risk affects corporate bond return are individual bond liquidity risk, the interaction between individual bond liquidity risk and market liquidity risk. The channels through which credit risk affects corporate bond return are individual bond credit risk, the interaction between individual bond credit risk and market credit risk. The main channel through which the interaction between liquidity risk and credit risk affects corporate bond return is the interaction between individual bond liquidity risk and market credit risk. The model reveals the impact mechanism of individual risk and market risk on bond return and explains why the interaction between liquidity risk and credit risk affects bond pricing.

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the U.S. Corporate Bond Market

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the U.S. Corporate Bond Market

Portfolio Trading in Corporate Bond Markets

Portfolio Trading in Corporate Bond Markets

The Impact of Air Pollution on Cost of Debt: Evidence from Corporate Bond Markets

The Impact of Air Pollution on Cost of Debt: Evidence from Corporate Bond Markets

The Role of Social Media in the Corporate Bond Market: Evidence from Twitter

The Role of Social Media in the Corporate Bond Market: Evidence from Twitter

Frictional Intermediation, Inventory Hedging, and the Rise of Portfolio Trading in the Corporate Bond Market

Frictional Intermediation, Inventory Hedging, and the Rise of Portfolio Trading in the Corporate Bond Market