With Market Closed, Trading Greek ETF GREK Is Gamble, Guessing Game

“The ETF can’t be more liquid than the underlying, and we know the underlying can be become quite illiquid” – Howard Marks

There’s been quite a bit of spirited discussion this year about whether ETFs provide liquidity. The proliferation of exchange traded bond vehicles and the concurrent decline in dealer inventories has led some to question whether investors are being lulled to sleep by so-called “phantom liquidity.”
Barclays took a close look at the issue recently and discovered that since 2009, the “net” portion of gross bond ETF trade volumes had declined from over 20% to just 12%, which the bank cites as evidence that ETFs are adding liquidity to the market.
But this could simply reflect the fact that volumes for ETFs that track assets like junk bonds have skyrocketed over the same period, with low yields fueling both the supply and demand side of the equation and thereby increasing the likelihood that flows will be diversifiable (versus unidirectional).

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