IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jfinec/v131y2019i1p168-185.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The use of credit default swaps by bond mutual funds: Liquidity provision and counterparty risk

Author

Listed:
  • Aragon, George O.
  • Li, Lei
  • Qian, Jun ‘QJ’

Abstract

Corporate bond mutual funds increased their selling of credit protection in the credit default swaps (CDS) market during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. This trading activity was primarily in multi-name CDS, greater among larger and established funds, and directed toward counterparty dealers in financial distress. Funds that sold credit protection during the crisis experienced greater credit market risk and superior post-crisis performance, consistent with higher expected returns from liquidity provision. Funds using Lehman Brothers as a counterparty experienced abnormal outflows and returns of –2% immediately following Lehman's bankruptcy, suggesting that funds’ opportunistic trading in CDS exposed investors to counterparty risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Aragon, George O. & Li, Lei & Qian, Jun ‘QJ’, 2019. "The use of credit default swaps by bond mutual funds: Liquidity provision and counterparty risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1), pages 168-185.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:131:y:2019:i:1:p:168-185
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2018.07.014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X18302010
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jfineco.2018.07.014?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adam, Tim & Guettler, Andre, 2015. "Pitfalls and perils of financial innovation: The use of CDS by corporate bond funds," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 204-214.
    2. Viral V. Acharya & Lasse H. Pedersen & Thomas Philippon & Matthew Richardson, 2017. "Measuring Systemic Risk," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(1), pages 2-47.
    3. Loon, Yee Cheng & Zhong, Zhaodong Ken, 2014. "The impact of central clearing on counterparty risk, liquidity, and trading: Evidence from the credit default swap market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(1), pages 91-115.
    4. Zhi Da & Joseph Engelberg & Pengjie Gao, 2015. "Editor's Choice The Sum of All FEARS Investor Sentiment and Asset Prices," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(1), pages 1-32.
    5. Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 2011. "Fire Sales in Finance and Macroeconomics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(1), pages 29-48, Winter.
    6. Oehmke, Martin & Zawadowski, Adam, 2015. "Synthetic or real? The equilibrium effects of credit default swaps on bond markets," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 84511, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Stulz, Rene, 2010. "Credit default Swaps and the Credit Crisis," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 6, pages 157-175.
    8. Agarwal, Vikas & Ruenzi, Stefan & Weigert, Florian, 2017. "Tail risk in hedge funds: A unique view from portfolio holdings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 610-636.
    9. Jack Bao & Jun Pan & Jiang Wang, 2011. "The Illiquidity of Corporate Bonds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(3), pages 911-946, June.
    10. Tim Adam & Andre Guettler, 2015. "Pitfalls and Perils of Financial Innovation: The Use of CDS by Corporate Bond Funds," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2015-013, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
    11. Stefan Nagel, 2012. "Evaporating Liquidity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(7), pages 2005-2039.
    12. Ang, Andrew & Gorovyy, Sergiy & van Inwegen, Gregory B., 2011. "Hedge fund leverage," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 102-126, October.
    13. Jennifer Lynch Koski & Jeffrey Pontiff, 1999. "How Are Derivatives Used? Evidence from the Mutual Fund Industry," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(2), pages 791-816, April.
    14. Wenxin Du & Salil Gadgil & Michael B. Gordy & Clara Vega, 2016. "Counterparty Risk and Counterparty Choice in the Credit Default Swap Market," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2016-087, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    15. Dick-Nielsen, Jens & Feldhütter, Peter & Lando, David, 2012. "Corporate bond liquidity before and after the onset of the subprime crisis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(3), pages 471-492.
    16. Elton, Edwin J & Gruber, Martin J & Blake, Christopher R, 1995. "Fundamental Economic Variables, Expected Returns, and Bond Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1229-1256, September.
    17. Wayne Ferson & Tyler R. Henry & Darren J. Kisgen, 2006. "Evaluating Government Bond Fund Performance with Stochastic Discount Factors," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(2), pages 423-455.
    18. Froot, Kenneth A., 2001. "The market for catastrophe risk: a clinical examination," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2-3), pages 529-571, May.
    19. Darrell Duffie, 2010. "Presidential Address: Asset Price Dynamics with Slow‐Moving Capital," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(4), pages 1237-1267, August.
    20. Petri Jylhä & Kalle Rinne & Matti Suominen, 2014. "Do Hedge Funds Supply or Demand Liquidity?," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 18(4), pages 1259-1298.
    21. Aragon, George O. & Strahan, Philip E., 2012. "Hedge funds as liquidity providers: Evidence from the Lehman bankruptcy," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(3), pages 570-587.
    22. Blake, Christopher R & Elton, Edwin J & Gruber, Martin J, 1993. "The Performance of Bond Mutual Funds," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(3), pages 370-403, July.
    23. Vikas Agarwal, 2004. "Risks and Portfolio Decisions Involving Hedge Funds," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(1), pages 63-98.
    24. Spiegel, Matthew & Zhang, Hong, 2013. "Mutual fund risk and market share-adjusted fund flows," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 506-528.
    25. Arora, Navneet & Gandhi, Priyank & Longstaff, Francis A., 2012. "Counterparty credit risk and the credit default swap market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(2), pages 280-293.
    26. Almazan, Andres & Brown, Keith C. & Carlson, Murray & Chapman, David A., 2004. "Why constrain your mutual fund manager?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 289-321, August.
    27. Adam Copeland & Antoine Martin & Michael Walker, 2014. "Repo Runs: Evidence from the Tri-Party Repo Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(6), pages 2343-2380, December.
    28. Froot, Kenneth A. & O'Connell, Paul G.J., 2008. "On the pricing of intermediated risks: Theory and application to catastrophe reinsurance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 69-85, January.
    29. Richard Stanton & Nancy Wallace, 2011. "The Bear's Lair: Index Credit Default Swaps and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(10), pages 3250-3280.
    30. Adrian, Tobias & Shin, Hyun Song, 2010. "Liquidity and leverage," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 418-437, July.
    31. Aragon, George O. & Spencer Martin, J., 2012. "A unique view of hedge fund derivatives usage: Safeguard or speculation?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(2), pages 436-456.
    32. Moneta, Fabio, 2015. "Measuring bond mutual fund performance with portfolio characteristics," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 223-242.
    33. Chen, Yong & Ferson, Wayne & Peters, Helen, 2010. "Measuring the timing ability and performance of bond mutual funds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 72-89, October.
    34. Martin Oehmke & Adam Zawadowski, 2015. "Synthetic or Real? The Equilibrium Effects of Credit Default Swaps on Bond Markets," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(12), pages 3303-3337.
    35. Chen, Yong, 2011. "Derivatives Use and Risk Taking: Evidence from the Hedge Fund Industry," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(4), pages 1073-1106, August.
    36. Itzhak Ben-David & Francesco Franzoni & Rabih Moussawi, 2012. "Hedge Fund Stock Trading in the Financial Crisis of 2007--2009," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(1), pages 1-54.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Abbas Hejri, 2022. "On the recent developments of mutual funds with fixed‐income holdings: a systematic review," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(2), pages 2313-2338, June.
    2. J. Alsubaiei, Bader & Calice, Giovanni & Vivian, Andrew, 2021. "Sovereign CDS and mutual funds: Global evidence," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    3. Na Ta & Bo Gao, 2022. "RETRACTED ARTICLE: Applying blockchain technology in the corporate bond model for default risk assessment under the marketization principle," Operations Management Research, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 879-890, December.
    4. Kim, Donghyun & Li, Chengcheng & Wang, Xiaoqiong, 2021. "Risk-taking and performance of government bond mutual funds," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    5. Dang, Thuy Duong & Hollstein, Fabian & Prokopczuk, Marcel, 2022. "How do corporate bond investors measure performance? Evidence from mutual fund flows," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Augustin, Patrick & Sokolovski, Valeri & Subrahmanyam, Marti G. & Tomio, Davide, 2022. "How sovereign is sovereign credit risk? Global prices, local quantities," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 92-111.
    2. Wei Jiang & Jitao Ou & Zhongyan Zhu, 2021. "Mutual Fund Holdings of Credit Default Swaps: Liquidity, Yield, and Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(2), pages 537-586, April.
    3. Andrew W. Lo & Mila Getmansky & Peter A. Lee, 2015. "Hedge Funds: A Dynamic Industry in Transition," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 483-577, December.
    4. Markus Natter & Martin Rohleder & Dominik Schulte & Marco Wilkens, 2017. "Bond mutual funds and complex investments," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 18(6), pages 433-456, October.
    5. Jaewon Choi & Or Shachar & Sean Seunghun Shin, 2019. "Dealer Liquidity Provision and the Breakdown of the Law of One Price: Evidence from the CDS–Bond Basis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(9), pages 4100-4122, September.
    6. Qin, Nan & Wang, Ying, 2021. "Does portfolio concentration affect performance? Evidence from corporate bond mutual funds," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    7. Cici, Gjergji & Zhang, Pei (Alex), 2021. "On the valuation skills of corporate bond mutual funds," CFR Working Papers 21-05, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    8. Wang, Xinjie & Wu, Yangru & Yan, Hongjun & Zhong, Zhaodong (Ken), 2021. "Funding liquidity shocks in a quasi-experiment: Evidence from the CDS Big Bang," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(2), pages 545-560.
    9. Gissler, Stefan, 2017. "Lockstep in liquidity: Common dealers and co-movement in bond liquidity," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 1-21.
    10. Cici, Gjergji & Palacios, Luis-Felipe, 2013. "On the use of options by mutual funds: Do they know what they are doing?," CFR Working Papers 11-08 [rev.], University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    11. Sandro Lunghi & Daniel Schmidt & Bastian von Beschwitz, 2021. "Fundamental Arbitrage under the Microscope: Evidence from Detailed Hedge Fund Transaction Data," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-022, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    12. Tang, Dragon Yongjun & Yan, Hong, 2017. "Understanding transactions prices in the credit default swaps market," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 1-27.
    13. Cao, Charles & Chen, Yong & Liang, Bing & Lo, Andrew W., 2013. "Can hedge funds time market liquidity?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 493-516.
    14. Cai, Fang & Han, Song & Li, Dan & Li, Yi, 2019. "Institutional herding and its price impact: Evidence from the corporate bond market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1), pages 139-167.
    15. Mike Anderson & René M. Stulz, 2017. "Is Post-Crisis Bond Liquidity Lower?," NBER Working Papers 23317, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Paulin, James & Calinescu, Anisoara & Wooldridge, Michael, 2019. "Understanding flash crash contagion and systemic risk: A micro–macro agent-based approach," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 200-229.
    17. Molestina Vivar, Luis & Wedow, Michael & Weistroffer, Christian, 2023. "Burned by leverage? Flows and fragility in bond mutual funds," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 354-380.
    18. Nick Guest & S. P. Kothari & Eric So, 2023. "Flight to Earnings: The Role of Earnings in Periods of Capital Scarcity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(8), pages 4908-4931, August.
    19. Yong Chen & Nan Qin, 2017. "The Behavior of Investor Flows in Corporate Bond Mutual Funds," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(5), pages 1365-1384, May.
    20. Czech, Robert, 2021. "Credit default swaps and corporate bond trading," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 48(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bond funds; Credit default swaps; Crisis; Liquidity provision; Counterparty risk;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:131:y:2019:i:1:p:168-185. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505576 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.