Liquidity effects on price and return co-movements in commodity futures markets

Commodity price comovement is an important research area in finance, and previous studies have investigated the determinants of price comovement using low-frequency (monthly or quarterly) macroeconomic data. In comparison, our paper attempts to scrutinize the liquidity effect on commodity prices and return movements based on daily data. Our findings contribute to the literature in three ways. First, we find significant positively correlated price movements across different commodity markets on a daily basis, and such comovement is driven by the cross-sectional liquidity spillover effect. Second, we observe that a cointegration relationship between individual commodity prices and the global price index can be established only if the liquidity effect is controlled. Finally, instantaneous daily liquidity shocks (i.e., innovation) exert a negative impact on daily commodity returns. However, liquidity shocks do not have a significant impact on monthly returns. Our findings are robust and have significant implications for macroeconomic policymaking, such as managing inflation risk.     

Liquidity risk and stock performance during the financial crisis

We investigate whether and how ex-ante liquidity risk affects realized stock returns during the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 in international equity markets. We find that stocks with higher pre-crisis return exposure to global market liquidity shocks experience larger price reductions during the crisis period. Our findings provide further insight into the comprehensive picture of the effect of liquidity risk on asset prices, especially in an international context and under different market conditions.     

Liquidity and Return Relationships in an Emerging Market

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between liquidity and stock returns in the Vietnam stock market during the global financial crisis. Vietnam is one of a new group of frontier emerging markets referred to as CIVETS (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa). We use a rich and detailed data set of firm characteristics to identify a positive relationship between liquidity and stock returns. This contradicts the negative correlation typically found in stock returns in developed markets. Our results support the proposition that when a market is not fully integrated with the global economy, a lack of liquidity will be a less important risk factor. Our findings contribute to those studies that highlight the diversification benefits from including frontier markets, which have a lower degree of integration with the global economy, in international portfolios.     

Return and volatility co-movement in commodity futures markets: the effects of liquidity risk

Commodity markets are a widely researched topic in the field of finance. In this paper, we investigate the co-movement of return and volatility measures in different commodity futures markets and how these measures are affected by liquidity risk. First, we find that commodity returns display co-movement and that liquidity risk plays a key role in shaping asset return patterns. Moreover, we show that the volatilities of commodity returns co-move, and we demonstrate the role of liquidity risk in this joint pattern. We also find that the commodity markets we investigated share a common volatility factor that determines their joint volatility co-movement. Because liquidity risk affects both commodity returns and volatility shocks, it might be interpreted as the common causal factor driving both measures simultaneously. Therefore, we affirm the view that liquidity shocks are firmly related to two residual risks originating from both market return and market volatility. Finally, we also show that liquidity spillovers can significantly drive cross-sectional correlation dynamics.     

Do foreign investors insulate firms from local shocks? Evidence from the response of investable firms to monetary policy

Extant research shows that stock returns of investable firms are highly sensitive to foreign market and global information shocks, suggesting that having foreign investors might insulate investable firms from shocks to local fundamentals. Examining 24 emerging markets, we find that both investable and non-investable firms are sensitive to local monetary policy shocks. This allays the concern that emerging-market opening reduces the efficacy of local monetary policy. We also find that in 11 countries (46% of our country-sample), investable firms are more sensitive to local shocks than non-investable firms. Differences in leverage, stock liquidity, size, domestic product-market exposure, or industry cyclicality do not drive this finding.     

Linkages between Indian and US financial markets: impact of global financial crisis and Eurozone debt crisis

This paper examines inter-linkages between Indian and US equity, foreign exchange and money markets using the vector autoregressive-multivariate GARCH-BEKK framework. We investigate the impact of global financial crisis (GFC) and Eurozone debt crisis (EZDC) on the conditional volatility and conditional correlation estimates derived from the multivariate GARCH model for Indian and US financial markets. Our results indicate that there is significant bidirectional causality-in-mean between the Indian stock market returns and the Rs./USD market returns, and significant unidirectional causality-in-mean from the US stock market returns to the Indian stock market returns. As regards volatility spillovers, we find that volatility in the Indian stock market rises in response to domestic as well as US financial market shocks but Indian financial market shocks do not impact the US markets. Further, impact of the recent crisis episodes on the covariance matrix is found to be significant. We find that volatility in the Indian and US financial markets significantly amplified during GFC. The conditional correlations across asset markets were significantly accentuated in the wake of the two crisis episodes. The impact of GFC on cross-market conditional correlations is higher for majority of the asset market pairs in comparison to the EZDC.     

An Empirical Analysis of Stock and Bond Market Liquidity

This article explores cross-market liquidity dynamics by estimatinga vector autoregressive model for liquidity (bid-ask spreadand depth, returns, volatility, and order flow in the stockand Treasury bond markets). Innovations to stock and bond marketliquidity and volatility are significantly correlated, implyingthat common factors drive liquidity and volatility in thesemarkets. Volatility shocks are informative in predicting shiftsin liquidity. During crisis periods, monetary expansions areassociated with increased liquidity. Moreover, money flows togovernment bond funds forecast bond market liquidity. The resultsestablish a link between "macro" liquidity, or money flows,and "micro" or transactions liquidity.     

Oil market uncertainty and excess returns on currency carry trade

This paper examines the role of oil market uncertainty on currency carry trade payoffs. We find that oil market uncertainty can impact currency carry trade excess returns. When oil market uncertainty rises, expected currency excess returns will increase. Our findings are robust to alternative measures of oil market uncertainty and, after controlling for traditional uncertainties, different types of oil shocks. The results also hold well in both developed and emerging markets, as well as for oil-related currencies, non-oil currencies, commodity currencies, and non-commodity currencies. Additionally, oil market uncertainty can be priced in the cross section of currency carry trade excess returns. This effect can be explained by investors becoming more risk averse under high oil market uncertainty and requiring greater compensation for bearing such risk. Moreover, our measure of oil market uncertainty, the downside risk from the oil market, is quite different from that of traditional aggregate measures.     

Market liquidity risk factor and financial market anomalies: Evidence from the Chinese stock market

The Chinese stock market is an order-driven market and hence its characteristics are structurally different from quote-driven markets. There are no studies that consider the role of the market liquidity risk factor in determining cross-sectional stock returns in a model including financial market anomalies for order-driven markets. Our aim is to test whether financial market anomalies such as firm size, the book-to-market ratio, the turnover rate, and momentum both with and without the inclusion of the market liquidity risk factor in the case of the Chinese stock market can explain cross-sectional stock returns. The empirical framework is based on the model proposed by Avramov and Chordia (AC, 2006). Our main finding is that the AC model can capture financial market anomalies except momentum when we include the market liquidity risk factor on the Chinese stock market.     

Investigating risk contagion initiated by endogenous liquidity shocks: evidence from the US and eurozone interbank markets

This paper investigates liquidity spillovers between the US and European interbank markets during turbulent and tranquil periods. We show that an endogenous model with time-varying transition probabilities is effective in describing the propagation of liquidity shocks within the interbank market, while predicting liquidity crashes characterised by changed dynamics. We show that liquidity shocks, originating from movements of the spread between the Asset Backed Commercial Paper and T-bill, drive regime changes in the euro fixed-float OIS swap rate. Our results support the idea of endogenous contagion from the US money market to the eurozone money market during the global financial crisis.     

Corporate financial structure and financial stability

Drawing on a unique dataset of flow-of funds and balance sheet data, this paper analyzes the impact of financial crises on aggregate corporate financing and expenditure in a range of countries. Investment and inventory contractions are the main contributors to lower GDP growth after crises, with a much greater effect in emerging market countries. The debt–equity ratio is correlated with investment and inventory declines following crises. Econometric analysis suggests that financial crises have a greater impact on expenditure and the financing of corporate sectors in emerging markets than in industrial countries. Industrial countries appear to benefit from a pick-up in bond issuance in the wake of banking crises. Although companies in emerging market countries hold more precautionary liquidity, this is evidently not sufficient to prevent a greater amplitude of response of expenditure to shocks.     

Global financial shocks and foreign asset repatriation: Do local investors play a stabilizing role?

We study the dynamic response of gross capital flows in emerging market economies to different global financial shocks, using a panel vector-autoregressive (PVAR) approach. Our focus lies primarily on the potentially stabilizing role played by domestic investors in offsetting the response of foreign investors to adverse global shocks. We find that, while foreign investors tend to retrench from emerging markets in response to global risk aversion and monetary policy shocks, foreign asset repatriation by resident investors does not always follow suit. Local investors play a meaningful stabilizing role in the face of global risk aversion shocks, with sizeable asset repatriation largely offsetting the retrenchment of non-residents. In contrast, foreign investor retrenchment in response to global monetary policy shocks is not mirrored by asset repatriation. Finally, we find robust evidence that positive global real shocks tend to have a positive impact on net capital inflows to emerging markets. Our results shed light on the likely impact of the Fed's QE tapering on capital flows to emerging market economies.     

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 shocks and real GDP growth: Evidence from a Bayesian time-varying parameter VAR

We examine the dynamic impact of liquidity shocks resonating in stock and housing markets on real GDP growth. We fit a Bayesian time-varying parameter VAR model with stochastic volatility to US data from 1970 to 2014. GDP becomes highly sensitive to house market liquidity shocks as disruptions in the sector start to emerge, yet more resilient to stock market liquidity shocks throughout time. We provide substantial evidence in favour of asymmetric responses of GDP growth both across the business cycle, and among business cycle troughs. Stock and house market liquidity shocks explain, on average, 17% and 35% of the variation in GDP during the Great Recession, respectively.     

Dynamic relationships among equity flows,equity returns and dividends: Behavior of U.S. investors in China and India

This research examines the linkages among U.S. equity flows to China and India, their equity returns, and their fundamental variables. We find that positive shocks to U.S. equity flows to China and India elicit an insignificant response to returns. This finding provides evidence that U.S. institutional investors are not a destabilizing influence in these markets. However, positive innovations to dividends in both China and India have a negative impact on returns. We conjecture that the high potential growth rates in these markets make it preferable for companies to retain earnings rather than pay dividends. In India, shocks to dividend yields have a strong negative influence on U.S. equity flows. Our results validate the need to take into account fundamental variables when examining U.S. investor behavior in emerging equity markets.     

Intra- and inter-regional spillovers between emerging capital markets around the world

In this paper, returns and volatility spillovers between emerging capital markets of Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South-East Asia are investigated. We distinguish between spillovers from countries located in one region (intra-regional) and in different regions (inter-regional) after controlling for shocks originating at home and on the global market. Both intra- and inter-regional spillovers are significant, with the former being more pronounced than the latter. Our findings indicate that linkages between emerging markets are not solely due to their common dependence on the global capital market and highlight the importance of common factors in intra-regional interdependencies.     

Beyond Basis Basics: Liquidity Demand and Deviations from the Law of One Price

Deviations from the law of one price between futures and spot prices—the futures-cash basis—capture information about liquidity demand for equity market exposure in global markets. We show that the basis comoves with dealer and investor futures positions, is contemporaneously positively correlated with futures and spot market returns, and negatively predicts futures and spot returns. These findings are consistent with the futures-cash basis reflecting liquidity demand that is common to futures and cash equity markets. We find persistent supply-demand imbalances for equity index exposure reflected in the basis, giving rise to an annual premium of 5% to 6%.     

Stock Liquidity Risk and the Cross‐sectional Earnings‐Returns Relationship

We argue that a higher sensitivity to aggregate market‐wide liquidity shocks (i.e., a higher liquidity risk) implies a tendency for a stock's price to converge to fundamentals. We test this intuition within the framework of the earnings‐returns relationship. We find a positive liquidity risk effect on the relationship between return and expected change in earnings. This effect on the earnings‐returns relationship is distinct from the negative effect observed for stock illiquidity level. Notably, the liquidity risk effect is evident (absent) during periods of neutral/low (high) aggregate market liquidity. We also show that the liquidity risk effect is dominant in firms that: (a) are of intermediate size; (b) are of intermediate book‐to‐market; and (c) are profit making.     

Determinants of idiosyncratic volatility: Evidence from the Indian stock market

This paper investigates whether firm-specific characteristics explain idiosyncratic volatility in the stocks of non-financial firms traded in the Indian stock market. It employs the linear time series five-factor model, augmented with a liquidity factor and the conditional EGARCH model, to extract yearly idiosyncratic volatility. We estimate a panel data regression to quantify the relationship between firm-specific characteristics and the volatility of individual securities. The results show that idiosyncratic volatility is significant in emerging markets such as India, and that cross-sectional return variations of firms are associated with firm-specific characteristics such as firm size, book-to-market ratio, momentum, liquidity, cash flow-to-price ratio, and returns on assets. We find that the idiosyncratic risk documented in this study is associated with smaller size of company, higher liquidity, low momentum, high book-to-market ratio, and low cash flow-to-price ratio. The findings suggest need to develop alternative tools to make investment decisions in emerging markets.     

Time-Varying World Market Integration

We propose a measure of capital market integration arising from a conditional regime-switching model. Our measure allows us to describe expected returns in countries that are segmented from world capital markets in one part of the sample and become integrated later in the sample. We find that a number of emerging markets exhibit time-varying integration. Some markets appear more integrated than one might expect based on prior knowledge of investment restrictions. Other markets appear segmented even though foreigners have relatively free access to their capital markets. While there is a perception that world capital markets have become more integrated, our country-specific investigation suggests that this is not always the case.