Why Look Beyond On-Screen Liquidity
- Most ETF liquidity profiles can change in different market regimes. And 30- and 90-day point-in-time statistics rarely provide the full picture.
- Robust liquidity due diligence must be tailored to account for shifts in market volatility, client demand, and user base.
- When determining fund liquidity, consider an investor’s typical execution strategy, trading frequency, order size, and the emphasis placed on maintaining low expense ratio profiles within a broader portfolio.
Many investors use 30- and 90-trading day point-in-time statistics to assess the liquidity profile of an ETF that has traded on an exchange longer than the last 30 days. But this can be a problem because — with the exception of a few highly liquid ETFs — a fund’s liquidity profile can change in different market regimes.
ETFs’ liquidity dynamics impact total cost of ownership (TCO), underscoring why investors need to look beyond a single period statistic when analyzing liquidity.
How Market and Fund Profile Changes Impact Liquidity
Many investment strategies require implementation over different periods, potentially occurring over multiple market volatility regimes and not always during periods of persistent tranquility. Volatility in the broader marketplace can impact the liquidity profile of an ETF in the secondary market, in addition to the liquidity of its underlying securities.
The type of client base using an ETF can also impact its liquidity profile in the secondary market and should be considered during the due diligence process. For instance, if a fund obtains an identifiable 3- and 5-year track record of top-decile performance, it could improve the fund’s liquidity profile through an uptick in activity (volumes and flows) from an investor base seeking a high-performing time-tested strategy. And so, robust liquidity due diligence must be tailored to account for shifts in market volatility, client demand, and user base.
To illustrate the value of a regime-dependent due diligence process, we chose to evaluate Fund A and Fund B — two ETFs that are focused on the same market — and specifically compared the TCO based on expense ratio and transaction costs, with other factors (tracking error, commissions) held constant (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Evaluating Total Cost of Ownership
| Fund A | Fund B | |
Expense Ratio |
0.11% |
0.14% |
Bid-Ask Spread: 30- and 90-Day Lookback |
0.03% and 0.05% |
0.02% and 0.02% |
Total Cost (Expense Ratio + Bid-Ask): 30- and 90-Day Lookback |
0.14% and 0.16% |
0.16% and 0.16% |
Source: Period-based statistics from Bloomberg Finance L.P., as of June 24, 2019.
Fund A shows the lower expense ratio. But Fund B has a slight bid-ask spread advantage over the past 90 days, but it is condensed over the past 30 days. The difference between the 30- and 90-day spreads also suggests the potential for a near-term trend forming. The lower-cost fund, therefore, depends on the lookback period used, a major flaw of period-based analytics.
Does Fund A have the lower total cost? Maybe. Maybe not. We need to look beyond one data point to find out.
Key Observations
Reviewing just one period in time may not capture all of the different trading environments as market volatility and client demand can change over time. Average spread and volume data can be skewed depending on market and client dynamics during the time period being considered. There are days within those periods where spreads can be much higher or much lower. And so, it’s important to take a deeper dive into the data.
Market-Based Analysis
Because an ETF’s assets and trading volume can ebb and flow, it’s helpful to focus on at least two years of data when conducting both market-based and fund-specific regime analysis.
- If the time period is too short, it may not allow for multiple market environments to be analyzed.
- If the time period is too long, analysis could be based on potentially stale data that may not reflect the current market environment and fund profile.
Given the variability of the spread for Fund A, the next step is to understand how the spread changes during different volatility regimes. An increase in market volatility can lead to higher bid-ask spreads on ETFs, with the bulk of the change depending on the fund’s liquidity profile and market focus.
Figure 3 illustrates how Fund A and Fund B behaved during different market volatility regimes. The regime was identified by calculating the rolling 30-day realized standard deviation of returns for the underlying markets of focus. The realized volatility was separated into deciles, with the lowest periods of volatility represented by the first decile and the highest periods represented by the tenth decile. For each decile, we calculated the median bid-ask spread.
Key Findings
Fund A experiences more variability based on the level of realized volatility of the underlying market. It also shows a linear relationship between periods of high volatility coinciding with higher spreads. Interestingly, Fund B’s tenth decile, when extended out to three decimals, actually delivers a median spread of 0.021% — its only decile with a spread that rounds higher than 0.02% flat. This underscores how high volatility regimes can impact overall trading costs, although only minimally for Fund B.
Fund Profile Analysis
Dissecting spread levels into specific buckets provides context for the variability of trading costs and significant spread changes based on volatility. While this process can detect certain relationships or patterns, one last step is necessary based on these findings. As documented throughout this analysis, there has been a recent compression of the 30-day bid-ask spread relative to longer time periods. A spread compression like this can occur if a fundamental change has occurred in the buying behavior for a fund, whether that’s prompted by a market being in favor, strong returns relative to its peers, or idiosyncratic client-specific drivers, such as an allocation with a model portfolio used across multiple trading platforms.
A time-series analysis of spread changes overlaid on top of asset growth for the defined lookback period can provide insight into any shifts in Fund A’s demand and user base. Consistent with our preference of looking at more than one statistic, Figure 4 plots the asset growth along with the rolling 5-day average, 30-day average, and 5-day median spread.
Key Findings
While Fund A had been of substantial size prior to 2019, with over $1.5 billion in assets, there was a distinct shift at the start of the year. Assets soared to nearly $3 billion, and the bid-ask spreads moved lower. This coincided with the median number of 2019’s daily trades, which is one metric that can be used to measure client demand, surging by 64% from a median daily value of 1,641 in 2018 to 2,686 trades a day in 2019.
This illustrates a clear change in the liquidity dynamics for Fund A. As a result, the bid-ask spreads from a time period when the fund was smaller do not reflect the fund’s current demand, user base and profile. To reinforce this fund’s regime change, we recalculated Figure 1 with just 2019 data and found that Fund A distribution was no longer normal, as the spreads compressed and were clustered at lower levels (Figure 5).
Controlling for Size Outliers with Number of Trades
Notably, the dynamics for Fund A did not change entirely, as there was a slight increase in the bid-ask spread in late May and early June, right around the time realized volatility picked up (readings registered in fifth, sixth, and seventh deciles). This proves that Fund A is not immune to volatility just because assets have increased by 162% since the start of 2018.
But the spread didn’t gap as high as before, which is a positive for Fund A. Therefore, its sensitivity to volatility can be considered to have been reduced as a result of higher assets and client user base. Even with a 0.04% bid-ask spread during the volatility spike, the total cost of ownership for Fund A (0.11% + 0.04% = 0.15%) is still below that of Fund B (0.14% + 0.02% = 0.16%).
Fund size directly impacted the bid-ask spread here. But this is not always the case. In this instance, the fund size coincided with an increase in the number of trades being executed. That means it wasn’t one large investor, but many investors seeking out this exposure. With greater demand from many counterparts, trading costs were naturally lowered.
Notably, a fund can also be large with one investor holding a majority of the shares outstanding. In those cases, that fund contains scale but not depth in client base. If that one large client does not trade, volumes are light, and liquidity can dry up.
Figure 6 depicts 2019 trading data for two smart beta ETFs that have similar assets, factor of focus, and expense ratios. The difference is 90% of the assets in Fund D are owned by one investor.
Figure 6: Asset Size Is a Factor, But Not the Only Factor
| Fund C | Fund D | |
AUM ($M) |
$554 |
$520 |
Average Trading Volume |
$5,531,513 |
$355,922 |
Total Number of Trades |
43,271 |
4,616 |
Median Bid-Ask (%) |
0.05 |
0.14 |
Expense Ratio (%) |
0.12 |
0.20 |
Source: Bloomberg Finance L.P., as of June 24, 2019. Date range is from January 1, 2019 to June 6, 2019. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.
Key Findings
Not having organic flow from multiple sources — even if the fund itself is large — can be detrimental to a fund’s liquidity profile, particularly in volatile markets that result in higher spreads. That’s why examining the diversity and number of investors — in addition to spreads, trading volume, and assets under management — should be a consideration while conducting a fund’s liquidity analysis.
Analyzing Trading Costs: A Multistep Process
Determining which fund is more beneficial to use depends on an investor’s typical execution strategy, trading frequency, order size, and the emphasis placed on maintaining low expense ratio profiles within a broader portfolio.
After running multiple screens, the results of our analysis differ at each step:
- Based on the 30-day average bid-ask spread, Fund A is the fund to select.
- Based on the 90-day average bid-ask spread, Fund A or Fund B could be selected.
- Based on volatility regime and frequency analysis, Fund B shows more consistency.
- Based on using more recent data and client usage information after a change in the fund’s profile, Fund A results in the lower overall cost.
The Bottom Line:
Getting to this answer, however fluid it is, requires more than just a simple screen of the past 30 days of trading — especially if trading volumes are light and market volatility is low.