IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cam/camdae/2537.html

ETF (Mis)pricing

Author

Listed:
  • Kirilenko, A.
  • Kraus, W.
  • Linton, O. B.
  • Xiao, M.

Abstract

Authorised Participants (APs), primarily market makers, possess the right to create and redeem Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) shares based on market demand. The important role they play in facilitating liquidity provision and eliminating ETF mispricing makes their behaviour crucial to the well-functioning of the ETF market. Using a novel regulatory dataset that covers the primary and secondary market transactions of 128 ETFs from 2018 to 2022, we identify a connection between mispricing (the difference between ETF prices and the Net Asset Value (NAV) of their underlying baskets) and AP's inventory. We found that the skill of specialized traders (APs) in managing inventory and the overall demand for an ETF are important reasons why its price might temporarily be "wrong." Our model predicted this, and our real-world data backs it up, showing these factors add explanatory power on top of standard economic or fundamental influences. Further, our model is helpful for understanding the incentive structure of APs’ market makingand arbitraging, as well as the mechanisms behind the significant mispricing observed in March 2020 across various ETF classes.

Suggested Citation

  • Kirilenko, A. & Kraus, W. & Linton, O. B. & Xiao, M., 2025. "ETF (Mis)pricing," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2537, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    • Handle: RePEc:cam:camdae:2537
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/publication-cwpe-pdfs/cwpe2537.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin Lettau & Ananth Madhavan, 2018. "Exchange-Traded Funds 101 for Economists," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(1), pages 135-154, Winter.
    2. Hasbrouck, Joel, 1991. "Measuring the Information Content of Stock Trades," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(1), pages 179-207, March.
    3. Pu Shen, 2002. "Market timing strategies that worked," Research Working Paper RWP 02-01, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    4. Madhavan, Ananth & Smidt, Seymour, 1993. "An Analysis of Changes in Specialist Inventories and Quotations," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(5), pages 1595-1628, December.
    5. Shawn Mankad & George Michailidis, 2013. "Discovering the ecosystem of an electronic financial market with a dynamic machine-learning method," Algorithmic Finance, IOS Press, vol. 2(2), pages 151-165.
    6. Davide Delle Monache & Ivan Petrella & Fabrizio Venditti, 2021. "Price Dividend Ratio and Long-Run Stock Returns: A Score-Driven State Space Model," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(4), pages 1054-1065, October.
    7. Andrei Kirilenko & Albert S. Kyle & Mehrdad Samadi & Tugkan Tuzun, 2017. "The Flash Crash: High-Frequency Trading in an Electronic Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(3), pages 967-998, June.
    8. Daniel Hoechle, 2007. "Robust standard errors for panel regressions with cross-sectional dependence," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 7(3), pages 281-312, September.
    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. repec:cam:camjip:2515 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Hasbrouck, Joel, 1996. "Order characteristics and stock price evolution An application to program trading," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 129-149, May.
    3. Hendershott, Terrence & Menkveld, Albert J., 2014. "Price pressures," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(3), pages 405-423.
    4. Zhang, Michael Yuanjie & Russell, Jeffrey R. & Tsay, Ruey S., 2008. "Determinants of bid and ask quotes and implications for the cost of trading," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 656-678, September.
    5. Panayides, Marios A., 2007. "Affirmative obligations and market making with inventory," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 513-542, November.
    6. Lyons, Richard K., 1995. "Tests of microstructural hypotheses in the foreign exchange market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(2-3), pages 321-351.
    7. Chung, Kee H. & Van Ness, Bonnie F. & Van Ness, Robert A., 1999. "Limit orders and the bid-ask spread," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 255-287, August.
    8. Lei, Qin & Wu, Guojun, 2005. "Time-varying informed and uninformed trading activities," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 153-181, May.
    9. Onur, Esen & Roberts, John S. & Tuzun, Tugkan, 2023. "Trader positions and aggregate portfolio demand," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 27(C).
    10. Albert Wang & Joon Chae, 2004. "Who makes markets? The Role of Dealers and Liquidity Provision," Econometric Society 2004 North American Summer Meetings 364, Econometric Society.
    11. Sandeep Neela, 2026. "An Explainable Market Integrity Monitoring System with Multi-Source Attention Signals and Transparent Scoring," Papers 2601.15304, arXiv.org.
    12. Chakravarty, Sugato, 2001. "Stealth-trading: Which traders' trades move stock prices?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 289-307, August.
    13. de Jong, Frank & Nijman, Theo & Roell, Ailsa, 1996. "Price effects of trading and components of the bid-ask spread on the Paris Bourse," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 193-213, June.
    14. Osler, Carol L. & Mende, Alexander & Menkhoff, Lukas, 2011. "Price discovery in currency markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(8), pages 1696-1718.
    15. Garriott, Corey & van Kervel, Vincent & Zoican, Marius, 2025. "Queuing and inventories in limit order markets," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    16. Snell, Andy & Tonks, Ian, 1996. "Using time series methods to assess information and inventory effects in a dealer market in Il-liquid stocks," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119167, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Hussain, Syed Mujahid & Ahmad, Nisar & Ahmed, Sheraz, 2023. "Applications of high-frequency data in finance: A bibliometric literature review," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    18. Jagjeev Dosanjh, 2017. "Exchange Initiatives and Market Efficiency: Evidence from the Australian Securities Exchange," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 1-2017, January-A.
    19. Bernhardt, Dan & Hughson, Eric, 2002. "Intraday trade in dealership markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(9), pages 1697-1732, October.
    20. Nicholas Hirschey, 2021. "Do High-Frequency Traders Anticipate Buying and Selling Pressure?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 3321-3345, June.
    21. Ron Kaniel & Hong Liu, "undated". "Are Transactions and Market Orders More Important than Limit Orders in the Quote Updating Process?," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 16-98, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.

    More about this item

    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:cam:camdae:2537. 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: Jake Dyer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/ .

    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.