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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Singapore Management University

Economics

2022

ETFs

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

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.