Mutual fund trading and liquidity

Abstract

This thesis uses equities holdings snapshots of mutual funds to study their trading patterns. Using quarter and semi-annual holdings of mutual funds, I am able to extract a main trading component with the application of the asymptotic principle component method. This component demonstrates short term predictability of returns over three months, suggesting overall mutual fund trades contain a liquidity trading component that temporarily pushes up stock prices that reverse over the next few months. I also demonstrates that this particular type of liquidity risk is related to other measures of liquidity risk. Therefore, this trading component can be a useful building block in creating a comprehensive measure of liquidity.