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Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

ETFs

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Full-Text Articles in Finance and Financial Management

Exchange-Traded Funds And Real Investment, Constantinos Antoniou, Frank Weikai Li, Xuewen Liu, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, Chengzhu Sun Mar 2023

Exchange-Traded Funds And Real Investment, Constantinos Antoniou, Frank Weikai Li, Xuewen Liu, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, Chengzhu Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the link between exchange-traded funds and real investment. Cross-sectionally, higher ETF ownership is associated with an increased sensitivity of real investment to Tobin's q and a heightened ability of stock returns to forecast future earnings. Inclusion of stocks in industry ETFs enhances investment-q sensitivity and implies greater incorporation of earnings information into prices prior to public releases. Greater nonmarket ETF ownership leads to increased (reduced) reliance of real investment on own (peers') stock prices. Overall, the evidence is consistent with ETFs positively affecting real investment efficiency via greater flows of information.


Financial Intermediaries And Contagion In Market Efficiency: The Case Of Etfs, Claire Yurong Hong, Frank Weikai Li, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam Mar 2022

Financial Intermediaries And Contagion In Market Efficiency: The Case Of Etfs, Claire Yurong Hong, Frank Weikai Li, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Capital constraints of financial intermediaries can affect liquidity provision. We investigate whether these constraints spillover and consequently cause contagion in the degree of market efficiency across assets managed by a common intermediary. Specifically, we provide evidence of strong comovement in pricing gaps between ETFs and their constituents for ETFs served by the same lead market maker (LMM). The effects are stronger for ETFs that are more illiquid and volatile, when the underlying constituents of the ETFs are more costly to arbitrage, and for LMMs with more constrained capital. Using extreme disruptions in debt markets during COVID-19 as an experiment, we …


Short Selling Etfs, Frank Weikai Li, Qifei Zhu Feb 2022

Short Selling Etfs, Frank Weikai Li, Qifei Zhu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We provide novel evidence that arbitrageurs use exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as an avenue to circumvent short-sale constraints at the stock level. Using a large sample of U.S. equity ETF holdings, we document that shorting activity on ETFs rises with the difficulty of shorting underlying stocks. Stocks heavily shorted via their holding ETFs underperform those that are lightly shorted. The return predictability of ETF shorting is distinct from stock-level shorting measures and is concentrated among stocks that face severe arbitrage constraints. These findings suggest that ETFs allow arbitrageurs to target overpriced stocks that are otherwise difficult to short.


Etf Momentum, Frank Weikai Li, Song Wee Melvyn Teo, Chloe Chunliu Yang Oct 2019

Etf Momentum, Frank Weikai Li, Song Wee Melvyn Teo, Chloe Chunliu Yang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We document economically large momentum profits when sorting ETFs on returns over the past two to four years. A value-weighted, long-short strategy based on ETF momentum delivers Carhart (1997) four-factor alphas of up to 1.20% per month. Neither cross-sectional stock momentum nor co-variation with macroeconomic and liquidity risks can explain ETF momentum. Instead, the post-holding period returns are most consonant with the behavioral story of delayed overreaction. While ETF momentum survives multiple adjustments for transaction costs, it may be difficult to arbitrage as the profits are volatile and concentrated in ETFs with high idiosyncratic volatility or that hold low-analyst-coverage stocks.


The Real Effects Of Exchange Traded Funds, Frank Weikai Li, Xuewen Liu, Chengzhu Sun Jul 2018

The Real Effects Of Exchange Traded Funds, Frank Weikai Li, Xuewen Liu, Chengzhu Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper investigates the effects of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on the real efficiency of the underlying securities. We document strong evidence that being held by ETFs increases the sensitivity of a firm's investment to its own stock price. This is consistent with the model prediction on the managerial learning channel. Higher ownership by ETFs increases the firm's stock price informativeness about systematic shocks but may decrease the informativeness about firm-specific shocks; however, the firm manager cares most and wants to learn from the stock price mainly about systematic shocks in making investment decisions as he already has precise private information …


Momentum Life Cycle Around The World, Frank Weikai Li, K. C. John Wei Feb 2015

Momentum Life Cycle Around The World, Frank Weikai Li, K. C. John Wei

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The momentum life cycle (MLC) hypothesis first proposed by Lee and Swaminathan (2000) applies also to global markets. Early-stage strategies significantly outperform the late-stage and conventional strategies in most countries. Individualism culture is positively associated with late-stage but unrelated to early-stage momentum profitability, suggesting that early- and late-stage momentums are driven by different underlying mechanisms. Consistent with Stein’s (2009) model that arbitrageurs could amplify mispricing, we find that late-stage momentum profits are more pronounced in countries with lower limits to arbitrage. Furthermore, we find that the MLC also applies to exchange traded funds in the United States.