In economics, a liquidity premium is the explanation for a difference between two types of financial securities (e.g. stocks), that have all the same qualities except liquidity. [1] It is a segment of a three-part theory that works to explain the behavior of yield curves for interest rates. The upwards-curving component of the interest yield can be explained by the liquidity premium. The reason behind this is that short term securities are less risky compared to long term rates due to the difference in maturity dates. Therefore investors expect a premium, or risk premium for investing in the risky security. Liquidity risk premiums are recommended to be used with longer-term investments, where those particular investments are illiquid.
Assets that are traded on an organized market are more liquid. Financial disclosure requirements are more stringent for quoted companies. For a given economic result, organized liquidity and transparency make the value of quoted share higher than the market value of an unquoted share.
Practitioners struggle with the valuation of illiquid securities. Longstaff (1995) [2] calculates the upper bound for this premium by assuming that without trading restrictions, an investor with perfect market-timing ability can sell a security at its maximum price during the period in which the security is restricted from trading. Thus, the upper bound for the liquidity premium is priced as the difference between this maximum price during the restricted trading period and the security price at the end of this period. Abudy and Raviv (2016) [3] extend this framework for the special case of corporate bonds by using a structural approach for pricing a corporate security. Consistent with the empirical literature the liquidity premium is positively related to the issuing firm's asset risk and leverage ratio and increases with a bond's credit quality. The term structure of illiquidity spread has a humped shape, where its maximum level depends on the firm's leverage ratio.
In economics and finance, arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a difference in prices in two or more markets – striking a combination of matching deals to capitalise on the difference, the profit being the difference between the market prices at which the unit is traded. When used by academics, an arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negative cash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and a positive cash flow in at least one state; in simple terms, it is the possibility of a risk-free profit after transaction costs. For example, an arbitrage opportunity is present when there is the possibility to instantaneously buy something for a low price and sell it for a higher price.
Long-Term Capital Management L.P. (LTCM) was a highly leveraged hedge fund. In 1998, it received a $3.6 billion bailout from a group of 14 banks, in a deal brokered and put together by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
In finance, a high-yield bond is a bond that is rated below investment grade by credit rating agencies. These bonds have a higher risk of default or other adverse credit events, but offer higher yields than investment-grade bonds in order to compensate for the increased risk.
In business, economics or investment, market liquidity is a market's feature whereby an individual or firm can quickly purchase or sell an asset without causing a drastic change in the asset's price. Liquidity involves the trade-off between the price at which an asset can be sold, and how quickly it can be sold. In a liquid market, the trade-off is mild: one can sell quickly without having to accept a significantly lower price. In a relatively illiquid market, an asset must be discounted in order to sell quickly. Money, or cash, is the most liquid asset because it can be exchanged for goods and services instantly at face value.
In finance, the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is a model used to determine a theoretically appropriate required rate of return of an asset, to make decisions about adding assets to a well-diversified portfolio.
A closed-end fund, also known as a closed-end mutual fund, is an investment vehicle fund that raises capital by issuing a fixed number of shares at its inception, and then invests that capital in financial assets such as stocks and bonds. After inception it is closed to new capital, although fund managers sometimes employ leverage. Investors can buy and sell the existing shares in secondary markets.
In finance, the yield curve is a graph which depicts how the yields on debt instruments – such as bonds – vary as a function of their years remaining to maturity. Typically, the graph's horizontal or x-axis is a time line of months or years remaining to maturity, with the shortest maturity on the left and progressively longer time periods on the right. The vertical or y-axis depicts the annualized yield to maturity.
In corporate finance, capital structure refers to the mix of various forms of external funds, known as capital, used to finance a business. It consists of shareholders' equity, debt, and preferred stock, and is detailed in the company's balance sheet. The larger the debt component is in relation to the other sources of capital, the greater financial leverage the firm is said to have. Too much debt can increase the risk of the company and reduce its financial flexibility, which at some point creates concern among investors and results in a greater cost of capital. Company management is responsible for establishing a capital structure for the corporation that makes optimal use of financial leverage and holds the cost of capital as low as possible.
Liquidity risk is a financial risk that for a certain period of time a given financial asset, security or commodity cannot be traded quickly enough in the market without impacting the market price.
A corporate bond is a bond issued by a corporation in order to raise financing for a variety of reasons such as to ongoing operations, mergers & acquisitions, or to expand business. The term is usually applied to longer-term debt instruments, with maturity of at least one year. Corporate debt instruments with maturity shorter than one year are referred to as commercial paper.
Fixed-income arbitrage is a group of market-neutral-investment strategies that are designed to take advantage of differences in interest rates between varying fixed-income securities or contracts. Arbitrage in terms of investment strategy, involves buying securities on one market for immediate resale on another market in order to profit from a price discrepancy.
Business valuation is a process and a set of procedures used to estimate the economic value of an owner's interest in a business. Here various valuation techniques are used by financial market participants to determine the price they are willing to pay or receive to effect a sale of the business. In addition to estimating the selling price of a business, the same valuation tools are often used by business appraisers to resolve disputes related to estate and gift taxation, divorce litigation, allocate business purchase price among business assets, establish a formula for estimating the value of partners' ownership interest for buy-sell agreements, and many other business and legal purposes such as in shareholders deadlock, divorce litigation and estate contest.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to finance:
A structured investment vehicle (SIV) is a non-bank financial institution established to earn a credit spread between the longer-term assets held in its portfolio and the shorter-term liabilities it issues. They are simple credit spread lenders, frequently "lending" by investing in securitizations, but also by investing in corporate bonds and funding by issuing commercial paper and medium term notes, which were usually rated AAA until the onset of the financial crisis. They did not expose themselves to either interest rate or currency risk and typically held asset to maturity. SIVs differ from asset-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations in that they are permanently capitalized and have an active management team.
A flight-to-quality, or flight-to-safety, is a financial market phenomenon occurring when investors sell what they perceive to be higher-risk investments and purchase safer investments, such as gold and other precious metals. This is considered a sign of fear in the marketplace, as investors seek less risk in exchange for lower profits.
The risk–return spectrum is the relationship between the amount of return gained on an investment and the amount of risk undertaken in that investment. The more return sought, the more risk that must be undertaken.
In financial economics, a liquidity crisis is an acute shortage of liquidity. Liquidity may refer to market liquidity, funding liquidity, or accounting liquidity. Additionally, some economists define a market to be liquid if it can absorb "liquidity trades" without large changes in price. This shortage of liquidity could reflect a fall in asset prices below their long run fundamental price, deterioration in external financing conditions, reduction in the number of market participants, or simply difficulty in trading assets.
Leverage is defined as the ratio of the asset value to the cash needed to purchase it. The leverage cycle can be defined as the procyclical expansion and contraction of leverage over the course of the business cycle. The existence of procyclical leverage amplifies the effect on asset prices over the business cycle.
Factor investing is an investment approach that involves targeting quantifiable firm characteristics or “factors” that can explain differences in stock returns. Security characteristics that may be included in a factor-based approach include size, low-volatility, value, momentum, asset growth, profitability, leverage, term and carry.
Chen Long currently serves as the director of Luohan Academy, the think tank of Alibaba. Before this, he was the chief strategy officer of Ant Financial Group since 2014. Chen received his Ph.D. in Finance from University of Toronto, and was a tenured professor at Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis. After returning to China in 2010, Chen took the position of the Associate Dean of Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB), Professor of Finance.