IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/30039.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Steering a Ship in Illiquid Waters: Active Management of Passive Funds

Author

Listed:
  • Naz Koont
  • Yiming Ma
  • Lubos Pastor
  • Yao Zeng

Abstract

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are typically viewed as passive index trackers. In contrast, we show that corporate bond ETFs actively manage their portfolios, trading off index tracking against liquidity transformation. In our model, ETFs optimally choose creation and redemption baskets that include cash and only a subset of index assets, especially if those assets are illiquid. Our evidence supports the model. We find that ETFs dynamically adjust their baskets to correct portfolio imbalances while facilitating ETF arbitrage. Basket inclusion improves bond liquidity in general, but worsens it in periods of large imbalance between creations and redemptions, such as the COVID-19 crisis.

Suggested Citation

  • Naz Koont & Yiming Ma & Lubos Pastor & Yao Zeng, 2022. "Steering a Ship in Illiquid Waters: Active Management of Passive Funds," NBER Working Papers 30039, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30039
    Note: AP
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w30039.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Caitlin D Dannhauser & Saeid Hoseinzade, 2022. "The Unintended Consequences of Corporate Bond ETFs: Evidence from the Taper Tantrum," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 35(1), pages 51-90.
    2. Martijn Cremers & Antti Petajisto, 2006. "How Active is Your Fund Manager? A New Measure That Predicts Performance," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2370, Yale School of Management, revised 01 May 2009.
    3. Itzhak Ben‐David & Francesco Franzoni & Rabih Moussawi, 2018. "Do ETFs Increase Volatility?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(6), pages 2471-2535, December.
    4. O'Hara, Maureen & Zhou, Xing (Alex), 2021. "Anatomy of a liquidity crisis: Corporate bonds in the COVID-19 crisis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 46-68.
    5. Falato, Antonio & Goldstein, Itay & Hortaçsu, Ali, 2021. "Financial fragility in the COVID-19 crisis: The case of investment funds in corporate bond markets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 35-52.
    6. Peter Feldhütter, 2012. "The Same Bond at Different Prices: Identifying Search Frictions and Selling Pressures," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(4), pages 1155-1206.
    7. Chen, Qi & Goldstein, Itay & Jiang, Wei, 2010. "Payoff complementarities and financial fragility: Evidence from mutual fund outflows," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 239-262, August.
    8. Goyenko, Ruslan Y. & Holden, Craig W. & Trzcinka, Charles A., 2009. "Do liquidity measures measure liquidity?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 153-181, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Dekker, Lennart & Molestina Vivar, Luis & Wedow, Michael & Weistroffer, Christian, 2023. "Liquidity buffers and open-end investment funds: containing outflows and reducing fire sales," Working Paper Series 2825, European Central Bank.
    2. Thomas M. Eisenbach & Gregory Phelan, 2022. "Fragility of Safe Asset Markets," Staff Reports 1026, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    3. Gábor Pintér & Chaojun Wang & Junyuan Zou, 2021. "Size Discount and Size Penalty Trading Costs in Bond Markets," Discussion Papers 2114, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    4. Boyarchenko, Nina & Kovner, Anna & Shachar, Or, 2022. "It’s what you say and what you buy: A holistic evaluation of the corporate credit facilities," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 695-731.
    5. Massimiliano Affinito & Raffaele Santioni, 2021. "When the panic broke out: COVID-19 and investment funds' portfolio rebalancing around the world," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1342, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    6. Thiago Fauvrelle & Mathias Skrutkowski, 2023. "Collateral pledgeability and asset manager portfolio choices during redemption waves," Working Papers 58, European Stability Mechanism, revised 12 Dec 2023.
    7. Noam Ben-Ze'ev, 2023. "Drivers of Flows-Performance Sensitivity in Mutual Funds," Bank of Israel Working Papers 2023.06, Bank of Israel.
    8. Pan, Kevin & Zeng, Yao, 2017. "ETF arbitrage under liquidity mismatch," ESRB Working Paper Series 59, European Systemic Risk Board.
    9. Fricke, Christoph & Fricke, Daniel, 2021. "Vulnerable asset management? The case of mutual funds," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    10. Agarwal, Vikas & Hanouna, Paul & Moussawi, Rabih & Stahel, Christof W., 2021. "Do ETFs increase the commonality in liquidity of underlying stocks?," CFR Working Papers 21-04, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    11. Chernenko, Sergey & Sunderam, Adi, 2020. "Do fire sales create externalities?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(3), pages 602-628.
    12. Bagattini, Giulio & Fecht, Falko & Maddaloni, Angela, 2023. "Liquidity support and distress resilience in bank-affiliated mutual funds," Working Paper Series 2799, European Central Bank.
    13. Barbu, Alexandru & Fricke, Christoph & Mönch, Emanuel, 2020. "Procyclical asset management and bond risk premia," Discussion Papers 38/2020, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    14. Tomas Williams, 2018. "Capital Inflows, Sovereign Debt and Bank Lending: Micro-Evidence from an Emerging Market," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(12), pages 4958-4994.
    15. Yousefi, Hamed & Najand, Mohammad, 2022. "Geographical diversification using ETFs: Multinational evidence from COVID-19 pandemic," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    16. Goldstein, Michael A. & Namin, Elmira Shekari, 2023. "Corporate bond liquidity and yield spreads: A review," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    17. Hurlin, Christophe & Iseli, Grégoire & Pérignon, Christophe & Yeung, Stanley, 2019. "The counterparty risk exposure of ETF investors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 215-230.
    18. O'Hara, Maureen & Zhou, Xing (Alex), 2021. "Anatomy of a liquidity crisis: Corporate bonds in the COVID-19 crisis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 46-68.
    19. Valentin Haddad & Alan Moreira & Tyler Muir, 2021. "When Selling Becomes Viral: Disruptions in Debt Markets in the COVID-19 Crisis and the Fed’s Response [Funding value adjustments]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(11), pages 5309-5351.
    20. Simone Letta & Pasquale Mirante, 2023. "Investigating the determinants of corporate bond credit spreads in the euro area," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 36, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:30039. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.