IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/revfin/v28y2024i3p769-804..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Leveraged speculators and asset prices†

Author

Listed:
  • Wenxi Jiang

Abstract

I test the hypothesis that the use of leverage by market speculators can increase the likelihood and magnitude of crashes in asset prices. Using a direct leverage measure derived from US public filings, I find that (1) stocks held by highly leveraged hedge funds subsequently have more negatively skewed returns than stocks held by less leveraged funds and (2) upon extremely negative earnings surprises or funding liquidity shocks, stocks owned by high-leverage funds exhibit abnormal price declines and subsequent reversal. Consistent with the fire sale and contagion hypothesis, high-leverage funds tend to reduce the position following negative news about a stock, and such selling can extend to other stocks in the portfolio, increasing the crash proneness of the stocks they hold.

Suggested Citation

  • Wenxi Jiang, 2024. "Leveraged speculators and asset prices†," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 28(3), pages 769-804.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:revfin:v:28:y:2024:i:3:p:769-804.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rof/rfad037
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Atilgan, Yigit & Bali, Turan G. & Demirtas, K. Ozgur & Gunaydin, A. Doruk, 2020. "Left-tail momentum: Underreaction to bad news, costly arbitrage and equity returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(3), pages 725-753.
    2. Mitchell, Mark & Pulvino, Todd, 2012. "Arbitrage crashes and the speed of capital," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(3), pages 469-490.
    3. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2009. "Market Liquidity and Funding Liquidity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(6), pages 2201-2238, June.
    4. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1992. "Liquidation Values and Debt Capacity: A Market Equilibrium Approach," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1343-1366, September.
    5. Hardouvelis, Gikas A, 1990. "Margin Requirements, Volatility, and the Transitory Components of Stock Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(4), pages 736-762, September.
    6. Tobias Adrian & Hyun Song Shin, 2014. "Procyclical Leverage and Value-at-Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(2), pages 373-403.
    7. Stephen Brown & William Goetzmann & Bing Liang & Christopher Schwarz, 2008. "Mandatory Disclosure and Operational Risk: Evidence from Hedge Fund Registration," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2785-2815, December.
    8. Gromb, Denis & Vayanos, Dimitri, 2002. "Equilibrium and welfare in markets with financially constrained arbitrageurs," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 361-407.
    9. Bernard, Vl & Thomas, Jk, 1989. "Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift - Delayed Price Response Or Risk Premium," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27, pages 1-36.
    10. Merrill, Craig B. & Nadauld, Taylor D. & Stulz, Rene M. & Sherlund, Shane, 2012. "Did Capital Requirements and Fair Value Accounting Spark Fire Sales in Distressed Mortgage-Backed Securities?," Working Papers 13-01, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Weiss Center.
    11. Chotibhak Jotikasthira & Christian Lundblad & Tarun Ramadorai, 2012. "Asset Fire Sales and Purchases and the International Transmission of Funding Shocks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(6), pages 2015-2050, December.
    12. Chen, Joseph & Hong, Harrison & Stein, Jeremy C., 2001. "Forecasting crashes: trading volume, past returns, and conditional skewness in stock prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 345-381, September.
    13. Schwert, C.W., 1989. "Margin Requirements And Stock Volatility," Papers t6, Columbia - Center for Futures Markets.
    14. Nicolae Gârleanu & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2011. "Margin-based Asset Pricing and Deviations from the Law of One Price," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(6), pages 1980-2022.
    15. Bali, Turan G. & Demirtas, K. Ozgur & Levy, Haim, 2009. "Is There an Intertemporal Relation between Downside Risk and Expected Returns?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(4), pages 883-909, August.
    16. Markus K. Brunnermeier, 2009. "Deciphering the Liquidity and Credit Crunch 2007-2008," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(1), pages 77-100, Winter.
    17. Andreas Schrimpf & Hyun Song Shin & Vladyslav Sushko, 2020. "Leverage and margin spirals in fixed income markets during the Covid-19 crisis," BIS Bulletins 2, Bank for International Settlements.
    18. John M. Griffin & Jin Xu, 2009. "How Smart Are the Smart Guys? A Unique View from Hedge Fund Stock Holdings," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(7), pages 2331-2370, July.
    19. White, Eugene N, 1990. "The Stock Market Boom and Crash of 1929 Revisited," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 67-83, Spring.
    20. Todd Mitton & Keith Vorkink, 2007. "Equilibrium Underdiversification and the Preference for Skewness," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(4), pages 1255-1288.
    21. Chabi-Yo, Fousseni & Ruenzi, Stefan & Weigert, Florian, 2018. "Crash Sensitivity and the Cross Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(3), pages 1059-1100, June.
    22. Langlois, Hugues, 2020. "Measuring skewness premia," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(2), pages 399-424.
    23. Fung, William & Hsieh, David A, 1997. "Empirical Characteristics of Dynamic Trading Strategies: The Case of Hedge Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(2), pages 275-302.
    24. Campbell R. Harvey & Akhtar Siddique, 2000. "Conditional Skewness in Asset Pricing Tests," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1263-1295, June.
    25. Itzhak Ben-David & Francesco Franzoni & Rabih Moussawi, 2012. "Hedge Fund Stock Trading in the Financial Crisis of 2007--2009," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(1), pages 1-54.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brunnermeier, Markus K. & Oehmke, Martin, 2013. "Bubbles, Financial Crises, and Systemic Risk," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1221-1288, Elsevier.
    2. Bian, Jiangze & Da, Zhi & He, Zhiguo & Lou, Dong & Shue, Kelly & Zhou, Hao, 2021. "Margin trading and leverage management," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118851, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Jiangze Bian & Zhiguo He & Kelly Shue & Hao Zhou, 2018. "Leverage-Induced Fire Sales and Stock Market Crashes," NBER Working Papers 25040, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Chiu, Junmao & Lien, Donald & Tsai, Wei-Che, 2023. "Global financial crisis, funding constraints, and liquidity of VIX futures," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    5. He, Zhiguo & Kelly, Bryan & Manela, Asaf, 2017. "Intermediary asset pricing: New evidence from many asset classes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(1), pages 1-35.
    6. Woon Sau Leung & Nicholas Taylor, 2013. "Testing for contagion: the impact of US structured markets on international financial markets," Chapters, in: Adrian R. Bell & Chris Brooks & Marcel Prokopczuk (ed.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Empirical Finance, chapter 11, pages 256-284, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Sandro Lunghi & Daniel Schmidt & Bastian von Beschwitz, 2021. "Fundamental Arbitrage under the Microscope: Evidence from Detailed Hedge Fund Transaction Data," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-022, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    8. Jiakai Chen & Haoyang Liu & Asani Sarkar & Zhaogang Song, 2020. "Dealers and the Dealer of Last Resort: Evidence from the Agency MBS Markets in the COVID-19 Crisis," Staff Reports 933, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    9. Timmer, Yannick, 2018. "Cyclical investment behavior across financial institutions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(2), pages 268-286.
    10. Maurizio Trapanese, 2021. "The economics of non-bank financial intermediation: why do we need to fill the regulation gap?," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 625, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    11. Andrew W. Lo & Mila Getmansky & Peter A. Lee, 2015. "Hedge Funds: A Dynamic Industry in Transition," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 483-577, December.
    12. Greenwood, Robin & Landier, Augustin & Thesmar, David, 2015. "Vulnerable banks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(3), pages 471-485.
    13. Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 2011. "Fire Sales in Finance and Macroeconomics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(1), pages 29-48, Winter.
    14. Bachmann, Manuel, 2018. "Market Illiquidity, Credit Freezes and Endogenous Funding Constraints," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 255, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    15. Manuel Bachmann, 2018. "Market Illiquidity, Credit Freezes and Endogenous Funding Constraints," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp255, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    16. Amir Akbari & Francesca Carrieri & Aytek Malkhozov, 2017. "Reversals in Global Market Integration and Funding Liquidity," International Finance Discussion Papers 1202, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    17. Gissler, Stefan, 2017. "Lockstep in liquidity: Common dealers and co-movement in bond liquidity," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 1-21.
    18. Stefan Nagel, 2012. "Evaporating Liquidity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(7), pages 2005-2039.
    19. Agarwal, Vikas & Aragon, George O. & Shi, Zhen, 2015. "Funding liquidity risk of funds of hedge funds: Evidence from their holdings," CFR Working Papers 15-12, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    20. Nick Guest & S. P. Kothari & Eric So, 2023. "Flight to Earnings: The Role of Earnings in Periods of Capital Scarcity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(8), pages 4908-4931, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    hedge fund leverage; price crash; return skewness; fire sales;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:revfin:v:28:y:2024:i:3:p:769-804.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eufaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.