Quantitative Investing and Market Instability: Evidence from Mutual Fund Fire Sales

Abstract

The May 2010 Flash Crash and August 2007 Quant Meltdown raised concerns about the impact of quantitative investment strategies on market instability. We examine whether quantitative investing dampens or exacerbates market instability by focusing on mutual fund fire sales. We find that quantitative fund fire sales have a much larger impact on market instability than fire sales by traditional mutual funds. For the same magnitude fire sale, quantitative funds’ impact is more than eight times as large. The larger impact is due to quantitative funds’ reliance on similar trading strategies. 

Keywords: Investment management, security selection, quantitative funds, mutual funds, fire sales, herding, market stability

JEL Classification: G11, G23, G40