Is There a Dark Side to Exchange Traded Funds? An Information Perspective
56 Pages Posted: 3 Jul 2015 Last revised: 9 Aug 2017
Date Written: January 13, 2017
Abstract
We examine whether an increase in ETF ownership is accompanied by a decline in pricing efficiency for the underlying component securities. Our tests show an increase in ETF ownership is associated with: (1) higher trading costs (bid-ask spreads and market liquidity); (2) an increase in “stock return synchronicity”; (3) a decline in “future earnings response coefficients”; and (4) a decline in the number of analysts covering the firm. Collectively, our findings support the view that increased ETF ownership can lead to higher trading costs and lower benefits from information acquisition. This combination results in less informative security prices for the underlying firms.
Keywords: Exchange traded funds (ETFs); Informed and uninformed traders; Trading costs; Informational efficiency; Pricing efficiency
JEL Classification: G11, G14, M41
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation