Liquidity dynamics across public and private markets

In this paper we investigate cross-asset liquidity between equity markets and REITs and between REITs and private real estate markets. While many studies have investigated REIT liquidity, and there is an emerging interest in liquidity in the private real estate markets, there appears to be little knowledge of the dynamics of cross-market liquidity. We find lower levels of liquidity for REITs compared to a set of control firms matched on size and book-to-market ratios. Commonality in liquidity is also lower for REITs than the controls and the overall market. However, we do find an important difference in share turnover for REITs, which appears to have a higher level of commonality than found in other studies. We suggest that this may be due to the financial crisis. Additionally we find evidence of similar time-series variation in liquidity for public and private real estate markets. We also find significant directional causality for most liquidity proxies from the public to private real estate markets. Finally our results show that there is strong contemporaneous correlation between both public and private real estate market liquidity and the term spread and real investment and consumption spending. REIT liquidity measures based on intraday data also appear to contain important information not found in measures constructed from daily returns.     

Returns transmission, value at risk, and diversification benefits in international REITs: evidence from the financial crisis

We examine daily cross-market return interactions and downside risk between a US REIT returns index and the return indexes of twelve international REIT markets. These relationships are investigated for a period of normal REIT market conditions as well as for periods of inflating and collapsing REIT prices. We find that US REIT returns are contemporaneously correlated with other REITs most strongly during the bubble and crash market conditions where the US REIT market is an almost unilateral transmitter of returns. We also find that the Value at Risk (VaR) of the least capitalized REIT markets is proportionally higher during base/normal market conditions but that the largest REIT markets have the highest VaR contribution during the crash (financial crisis) period. Overall, our evidence indicates that REIT market risk shifted to the largest REIT markets and that diversification benefits eroded considerably during turbulent market conditions.     

Stock Market Declines and Liquidity

Consistent with recent theoretical models where binding capital constraints lead to sudden liquidity dry-ups, we find that negative market returns decrease stock liquidity, especially during times of tightness in the funding market. The asymmetric effect of changes in aggregate asset values on liquidity and commonality in liquidity cannot be fully explained by changes in demand for liquidity or volatility effects. We document interindustry spillover effects in liquidity, which are likely to arise from capital constraints in the market making sector. We also find economically significant returns to supplying liquidity following periods of large drops in market valuations.     

Size,value, and momentum in developed country equity returns: Macroeconomic and liquidity exposures

The paper investigates value and momentum factors in 23 developed international stock markets. We find that typically value and momentum premia are smaller and more negatively correlated for large market capitalization stocks relative to small. Momentum factors are more highly correlated internationally relative to value. We provide international evidence on three sets of risk exposures of value and momentum returns: macroeconomic risk, funding liquidity risk, and stock market liquidity risk. We find that value returns are typically lower prior to a recession while momentum returns often exhibit little sensitivity. Value returns are typically lower in times of poor funding liquidity, whereas, with notable exceptions, momentum returns are typically unaffected. Lastly, for almost all countries, value returns are high in poor stock market liquidity conditions.     

Liquidity in the Foreign Exchange Market: Measurement,Commonality, and Risk Premiums

We provide the first systematic study of liquidity in the foreign exchange market. We find significant variation in liquidity across exchange rates, substantial illiquidity costs, and strong commonality in liquidity across currencies and with equity and bond markets. Analyzing the impact of liquidity risk on carry trades, we show that funding (investment) currencies offer insurance against (exposure to) liquidity risk. A liquidity risk factor has a strong impact on carry trade returns from 2007 to 2009, suggesting that liquidity risk is priced. We present evidence that liquidity spirals may trigger these findings.     

The asset pricing effects of UK market liquidity shocks: Evidence from tick data

Using tick data covering a 12 year period including much of the recent financial crisis we provide an unprecedented examination of the relationship between liquidity and stock returns in the UK market. Previous research on liquidity using high frequency data omits the recent financial crisis and is focused on the US, which has a different market structure to the UK. We first construct several microstructure liquidity measures for FTSE All Share stocks, demonstrating that tick data reveal patterns in intra-day liquidity not observable with lower frequency daily data. Our asymptotic principal component analysis captures commonality in liquidity across stocks to construct systematic market liquidity factors. We find that cross-sectional differences in returns exist across portfolios sorted by liquidity risk. These are strongly robust to market, size and value risk. The inclusion of a momentum factor partially explains some of the liquidity premia but they remain statistically significant. However, during the crisis period a long liquidity risk strategy experiences significantly negative alphas.     

Reprint of: Market liquidity in the financial crisis: The role of liquidity commonality and flight-to-quality

We examine the dynamics and the drivers of market liquidity during the financial crisis, using a unique volume-weighted spread measure. According to the literature we find that market liquidity is impaired when stock markets decline, implying a positive relation between market and liquidity risk. Moreover, this relationship is the stronger the deeper one digs into the order book. Even more interestingly, this paper sheds further light on so far puzzling features of market liquidity: liquidity commonality and flight-to-quality. We show that liquidity commonality varies over time, increases during market downturns, peaks at major crisis events and becomes weaker the deeper we look into the limit order book. Consistent with recent theoretical models that argue for a spiral effect between the financial sector’s funding liquidity and an asset’s market liquidity, we find that funding liquidity tightness induces an increase in liquidity commonality which then leads to market-wide liquidity dry-ups. Therefore our findings corroborate the view that market liquidity can be a driving force for financial contagion. Finally, we show that there is a positive relationship between credit risk and liquidity risk, i.e., there is a spread between liquidity costs of high and low credit quality stocks, and that in times of increased market uncertainty the impact of credit risk on liquidity risk intensifies. This corroborates the existence of a flight-to-quality or flight-to-liquidity phenomenon also on the stock markets.     

Market liquidity in the financial crisis: The role of liquidity commonality and flight-to-quality

We examine the dynamics and the drivers of market liquidity during the financial crisis, using a unique volume-weighted spread measure. According to the literature we find that market liquidity is impaired when stock markets decline, implying a positive relation between market and liquidity risk. Moreover, this relationship is the stronger the deeper one digs into the order book. Even more interestingly, this paper sheds further light on so far puzzling features of market liquidity: liquidity commonality and flight-to-quality. We show that liquidity commonality varies over time, increases during market downturns, peaks at major crisis events and becomes weaker the deeper we look into the limit order book. Consistent with recent theoretical models that argue for a spiral effect between the financial sector’s funding liquidity and an asset’s market liquidity, we find that funding liquidity tightness induces an increase in liquidity commonality which then leads to market-wide liquidity dry-ups. Therefore our findings corroborate the view that market liquidity can be a driving force for financial contagion. Finally, we show that there is a positive relationship between credit risk and liquidity risk, i.e., there is a spread between liquidity costs of high and low credit quality stocks, and that in times of increased market uncertainty the impact of credit risk on liquidity risk intensifies. This corroborates the existence of a flight-to-quality or flight-to-liquidity phenomenon also on the stock markets.     

Commonality on Euronext: Do location and account type matter?

Using a rich dataset of orders and trades for a sample of stocks listed on four Euronext markets, we apply principal component analysis and provide evidence on the existence and magnitude of commonality in returns, order flow and liquidity. We show that commonality in order flow mainly comes from foreign market members acting for their own account. Proprietary trading is a major driver in trade imbalance and return commonality. Next, we provide evidence on commonality in hidden liquidity. In contrast to commonality in visible depth that is the strongest for large firms, comovements in hidden depth seem to be stronger for small caps. We also show that commonality in returns, order flow and liquidity is not constant throughout the day. The opening of US markets is a key moment where commonality often reaches its maximum level. These findings suggest that most of the commonality is driven by foreigners, generating an increase in systematic liquidity risk, due to foreigners' similar trading behaviors, whose importance evolves throughout the day.     

An Examination of Macroeconomic Effects on the Liquidity of REITs

In this research, we investigate the effects of changes in and levels of selected macroeconomic variables on the liquidity of Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT, henceforth) stocks. We study in particular REIT market trading liquidity and REIT funding liquidity. We use debt service coverage ratios, loan-to-value ratios and the number of loans on commercial commitments as proxies for the funding liquidity of REITs. We use Amihud Illiquidity measurement and Turnover Ratio measurement to estimate REIT market trading liquidity. Our results are fourfold: one, funding liquidity is influenced by changes in macroeconomic factors; two, macroeconomic effects are different across phases of the business cycle; three, funding liquidity is significantly positively related to REIT market liquidity (this is supportive of Brunnermeier and Petersen’s Review of Financial Studies, 22:2201–2238 (2009) findings); and four, these effects vary across economic regimes. A key outcome of this work is that increases in debt to equity reduce market liquidity for REIT stocks.     

Uncovering the time-varying relationship between commonality in liquidity and volatility

This study examines the dynamic linkages between commonality in liquidity in international stock markets and market volatility. Using a recently proposed liquidity measure as input in a variance decomposition exercise, we show that innovations to liquidity in most markets are induced predominately by inter-market innovations. We also find that commonality in liquidity peaks immediately after large market downturns, coinciding with periods of crisis. The results from a dynamic Granger causality test indicate that the relationship between commonality in liquidity and market volatility is bi-directional and time-varying. We show that while volatility Granger-causes commonality in liquidity throughout the entire sample period, market volatility is enhanced by commonality in liquidity only in sub-periods. Our results are helpful for practitioners and policy makers.     

Price Discovery in Real Estate Markets: A Dynamic Analysis

Although the correlation between the public and private market pricing of real estate has generated considerable research effort, the methods utilized in previous studies have failed to capture the dynamic nature of this correlation. This paper proposes a new statistical method to address this issue. This method, known as the dynamic conditional correlation GARCH model, enables us to study the dynamics of the correlation between the two markets over time and enrich our understanding of the public and private market pricing of real assets. We find that the correlation between NAV returns and REIT returns is dynamic for all REIT types and there is a strong degree of persistence in the series of correlation. Our Granger-causality tests show that price discovery generally takes place in the securitized public market. However, we also find significant variations across property types and individual firms within each type. Our results indicate that constructing an optimal portfolio requires firm level analysis of causality and correlation between REIT returns and NAV returns.     

Commonality in liquidity and multilateral trading facilities

We use the introduction of two multilateral trading facilities (MTFs) to examine the impact of market fragmentation on commonality in liquidity. We find that the introduction of MTFs following the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive increases the comovement of stocks’ liquidity with MTF liquidity, while the comovement with the home market liquidity generally decreases. We also find that the higher the MTF trading volume or the number of MTFs trading a stock, the stronger the effect. Further, we find that the commonality in liquidity remains unchanged for a matched control sample of stocks that do not trade on MTFs.     

Does liquidity drive stock market returns? The role of investor risk aversion

In this paper, we explore the relations between liquidity, stock returns, and investor risk aversion as captured by the variance risk premium (VRP). This is motivated by theoretical and empirical evidence in the literature which suggests that investor risk aversion negatively correlates with asset liquidity, and ample empirical evidence documenting liquidity risk premium. We use monthly US data from January 1999 to December 2018 and show that innovations in the VRP Granger-cause stock returns, which in turn drive liquidity. Our findings are consistent with predictions of prior theories and highlight the predictability of the VRP. They also contribute to the on-going debate on the causal relation between stock returns and liquidity. Finally, we explore the channels through which the VRP impacts liquidity and find that the VRP influences market and momentum factors, and that movements in these factors lead to changes in liquidity.

     

Changes in REIT Liquidity 1988?C2007: Evidence from Daily Data

In this study, we present panel-data evidence on REIT liquidity and its determinants over the 1988?C2007 period. We focus upon liquidity measures that do not require micro-structure data (1) to facilitate use of our results as benchmarks for comparisons with results from international markets for which micro-structure data may be unavailable, (2) to provide benchmarks that do not require access to costly (and voluminous) micro-structure data. We find that REIT liquidity improved during the early and mid-1990s, deteriorated during the late 1990s, and then improved dramatically during 2000?C2006, with the notable exception of 2007. Liquidity improved the most for REITs traded on the NYSE, and was an order of magnitude better than liquidity of REITs traded on the AMEX or NASDAQ. We link the deterioration in liquidity observed in 2007 to the investment portfolio of a REIT. We find that the percentage bid-ask spread is highly correlated with the measure of price impact proposed by Amihud (2002). We provide panel-data evidence on the key determinants of the percentage bid-ask spread that largely confirms the results reported by Bhasin et al. (1997) for 1990 and 1994: the percentage spread is a positive function of the volatility of stock returns, and a negative function of dollar volume turnover, share price and market capitalization. Finally, we provide evidence that these results obtained using daily closing bid- and ask-prices are not qualitatively different from those obtained using market micro-structure data. This suggests that we can use liquidity measures based upon readily available daily return data rather than being forced to rely upon market micro-structure data.     

Common risk factors in the cross-section of corporate bond returns

We investigate the cross-sectional determinants of corporate bond returns and find that downside risk is the strongest predictor of future bond returns. We also introduce common risk factors based on the prevalent risk characteristics of corporate bonds—downside risk, credit risk, and liquidity risk—and find that these novel bond factors have economically and statistically significant risk premiums that cannot be explained by long-established stock and bond market factors. We show that the newly proposed risk factors outperform all other models considered in the literature in explaining the returns of the industry- and size/maturity-sorted portfolios of corporate bonds.     

The Relative Importance of Stock, Bond and Real Estate Factors in Explaining REIT Returns

This paper examines the link between REIT, financial asset and real estate returns, and tests whether it changed subsequent to the “REIT boom” of the early 1990s. The main focus is on answering the question do REIT returns now better reflect the performance of underlying direct (unsecuritized) real estate? We develop and implement a variance decomposition for REIT returns that separates REIT return variability into components directly related to major stock, bond, and real estate-related return indices, as well as idiosyncratic or sector-specific effects. This is applied to aggregate REIT sector (NAREIT) returns as well as returns to size and property-type based REIT portfolios. Our results show that the REIT market went from being driven largely by the same economic factors that drive large cap stocks through the 1970s and 1980s to being more strongly related to both small cap stock and real estate-related factors in the 1990s. There is also a steady increase over time in the proportion of volatility not accounted for by stock, bond or real estate related factors. We also find that small cap REITs are “more like real estate” compared to larger cap REITs, at least over the 1993–1998 period. We argue that this could be a result of the institutionalization of the ownership of larger cap REITs that took place in the 1990s.     

Commonality in Liquidity: Evidence from an Order-Driven Market Structure

Events such as the 1997 East Asian financial crisis indicate that individual firm liquidity is strongly influenced by marketwide factors. Previous market microstructure research, however, focuses almost exclusively on the firm‐specific attributes of liquidity. Our study follows the recent shift in emphasis toward commonality by examining systematic liquidity in an order‐driven market structure. Using data from the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong, we show that commonality in liquidity includes both market and industry components, and is pervasive across size‐sorted portfolios. We also find a significant market and industry component in individual firms' order flow. In contrast to quote‐driven results, we do not find a positive relation between firm size and sensitivity to changes in marketwide bid‐ask spreads.     

Equity Capital Flows and Demand for REITs

REITs are attractive to investors due to their unique characteristics such as high dividend yields, low correlation with common stocks, and a potential hedge against inflation. Thus the market demand curve of REIT equities may not be horizontal. This paper examines the shape of the market demand curve for REIT equities by employing REIT equity capital flows as a proxy for REIT aggregate demand. Our results do not support a downward demand curve for REIT equities. That is, we do not find evidence for the price-pressure effect in REIT returns. Instead, we find it is REIT returns that affect REIT equity capital flows rather than REIT equity flows that affect REIT returns. The results are consistent when we allow for the presence of market fundamental variables in our analysis. In addition, a variance decomposition analysis suggests that REIT equity capital flows do not cause revisions in expected cash flows (dividends) that are strong enough to impact REIT returns. Thus our findings are consistent with implications that the market demand curve for REIT equities is horizontal.     

REIT Characteristics and the Sensitivity of REIT Returns

Previous research on the returns to real estate investment trusts (REITs) has considered whether REITs are systematically exposed to general stock-market risk and interest-rate risk. This study examines how the sensitivity of REIT returns to these factors may be influenced by various REIT characteristics. Using a sample of publicly traded REITs, we estimate the sensitivity of REIT returns to stock market and interest-rate changes. We then propose and implement a model for testing whether differences in asset structure, financial leverage, management strategy, and degree of specialization in the REIT portfolios are related to their sensitivity to interest rate and market risk. Our results permit us to offer some inferences about how REITs can alter their risk exposure by managing these characteristics.