Do ETFs Increase Volatility?
Journal of Finance, Forthcoming
Fisher College of Business Working Paper No. 2011-03-20
Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper No. 11-66
AFA 2013 San Diego Meetings Paper
Charles A. Dice Center Working Paper No. 2011-20
145 Pages Posted: 2 Dec 2011 Last revised: 3 Dec 2017
There are 2 versions of this paper
Do ETFs Increase Volatility?
Do Etfs Increase Volatility?
Date Written: November 30, 2017
Abstract
Due to their low trading costs, ETFs are potentially a catalyst for short-horizon liquidity traders. The liquidity shocks can propagate to the underlying securities through the arbitrage channel, and ETFs may increase the non-fundamental volatility of the securities in their baskets. We exploit exogenous changes in index membership and find that stocks with higher ETF ownership display significantly higher volatility. ETF ownership increases the negative autocorrelation in stock prices. The increase in volatility appears to introduce undiversifiable risk in prices, because stocks with high ETF ownership earn a significant risk premium of up to 56 basis points monthly.
Keywords: ETFs, volatility, arbitrage, fund flows
JEL Classification: G12, G14, G15
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation