Stock Market Liquidity During Crisis Periods: Australian Evidence

Liquidity is an important financial market characteristic, effecting portfolio decisions, and priced risk. During periods of market turmoil, such as occurs during financial crisis, investors have an elevated need for cash and so understanding how liquidity differs during those periods is important. We examine how stock market liquidity was impacted by two crises with distinct origins, the global financial crisis (GFC) and the COVID-pandemic. Our sample includes the S&P/ASX200 constituents for the period January 2005 – December 2020, providing 654,365 firm-day observations. We find that the Australian stock market is less liquid during both crisis periods, spreads are wider and price impact is larger (stock prices move a lot in response to small amounts of volume). Although the magnitude of the liquidity change is greater at the onset of COVID, the duration of the change during the GFC is longer, resulting in a larger average impact. While trading volume declines during the GFC it is higher during COVID. Our results are robust to alternate liquidity proxies, methodologies, and crisis period identification, and applicable across stock sectors except for Energy.