Exploiting Liquidity Needs of Futures-based ETFs

Has growth in futures-based exchange-traded funds (ETF) predictably affected pricing of underlying assets? In his November 2019 paper entitled “Passive Funds Actively Affect Prices: Evidence from the Largest ETF Markets”, Karamfil Todorov investigates impacts of ETF trading on pricing of futures on equity volatility (VIX) and commodities, the two asset classes most dominated by ETFs. He decomposes sources of these impacts into three rebalancing needs: (1) rolling of futures contracts as they expire; (2) inflow/outflow of investor funds; and, (3) maintenance of constant daily leverage. By modeling the fundamental value of VIX futures contracts using S&P 500 Index and VIX option prices, he quantifies non-fundamental ETF rebalancing impacts on VIX futures prices. Finally, he tests a strategy to exploit the need for daily leverage rebalancing by trading against it. Specifically, he approximates daily liquidity provision by each intraday reforming portfolios that short a pair of long and short futures-based ETFs on the same underlying asset (volatility, natural gas, gold or silver). In other words, he shorts at the open and covers at the close each day. Using daily data for selected ETFs and their underlying futures for VIX, U.S. natural gas, silver, gold and oil as available during January 2000 through December 2018, he finds that: (more…)