Measuring liquidity on stock market: impact on liquidity ratio

The purpose – It is important to emphasize that liquidity on Croatian stock market is low, the purpose of this paper is to test empirically and find out which variables make crucial role in decision making process of investing in stocks. Design – This paper explores the impact of various liquidity variables on liquidity ratio since it is still insufficiently researched topic. Methodology –This research uses secondary and primary data available from Croatian stock market. Considering primary data this paper use daily data from Zagreb stock exchange for 196 stocks traded in one year, with the purpose of finding the key variables that make up some stocks more attractive to investors. Liquidity is measured with Amihud's liquidity ratio, which shows the amount of capital sufficient to change price by 1%. Approach – With more than 61.035 input data, using the method of multiple regression, this paper examined the influence of different variables on the stock liquidity on Croatian capital market. Findings – Key findings of this paper indicate that size of firm measured by market capitalization, number of issued stocks and achieved volume affects liquidity ratio. This paper uses multiple regression, and correlation matrix to show dependence among liquidity variables. There is strong correlation coefficient among liquidity variables and liquidity ratio, results are statistically significant. The originality of this research – The originality of this work rises from the obtained research results and the fact that this is first paper that studies problem of stock liquidity on Croatian capital market.