ETFs trading at abnormal prices due to high volatility: Check this before investing in mutual fund ETF to prevent avoidable loss (2024)

The Lok Sabha election results, announced on June 4, surprised many people. The stock market was also affected, with panic buying and selling leading to increased volatility. While real-time share prices are easily accessible, gauging this for ETF trading on stock exchanges is more challenging. Many investors, unaware of the impact of high volatility on their investment, ended up losing money or experiencing unexpected gains.

As per the Economic Times report, on June 4, 2024, the Indian stock market experienced extremely heavy buoyancy, as the Nifty 50 index was down by up to 8.5% on an intraday basis. On June 5, 2024, the Nifty 50 index went up by 3.36%. These fluctuations in the value of indices like the Nifty 50 and others caused prices of most ETFs to go haywire, and thus, they were either trading at a huge premium or discount to their indicative NAV (iNAV).

What went wrong on June 4, 2024, and June 5, 2024 with ETFs?

As per the head of passive investments of a mutual fund house, the Indian stock market was not ready for such high volatility and thus, the NAV of ETFs varied from their iNAV price by a big margin.

Zerodha said on X (formerly Twitter) on June 5, 2024, "Many ETFs seem to be trading at a big premium or discount to their benchmark. Please keep these things in mind before buying and selling ETFs. Whenever there are sharp moves in the markets, ETFs can trade at abnormal premiums or discounts."

Here is a look at what went wrong, according to market experts:

Market makers of ETFs had insufficient capital: "Market markets had insufficient capital to support such large, unusual volatility. Asset Management Companies (AMCs) use market makers to provide liquidity to buyers and sellers. Say you place a buy order for Rs 1 crore worth of ETF units and hence place an order. But an AMC is managed by Trusts, who cannot generate units on their own, so this is where a market maker comes into play. Market makers will pay the AMC Rs 1 crore and then the AMC will generate the ETF units of equivalent value and then the buyer will get delivery after T+2 days," said the head of passive investments of a mutual fund house quoted above.

Supply and Demand: "Like any security, ETFs trade based on supply and demand in the market. If there are more buyers than sellers (high demand), the price can rise above the iNAV (premium). Conversely, if there are more sellers than buyers (oversupply), the price can fall below the iNAV (discount)," says Amit Goel, Co-Founder and Chief Global Strategist, Pace 360, an investment firm.

Market Anticipation: "If investors anticipate that the underlying assets in the ETF will rise in price soon, they might be willing to pay a premium over the iNAV to get in early. On the other hand, if a decline is expected, they might sell their holdings, driving the price down to a discount," says Goel.

"There are three popular market makers in India: Parwati Capital, East India Securities and Kanjalochana Finserve. All the AMCs mostly use these three brokers for market making purposes of its ETFs. Almost 80% of the market making activities for an ETF is done by East India Securities and 20% by others. I don't have the exact figure but roughly East India Securities can deploy 500 crores a day for providing liquidity to all the ETFs. On days like Budget, Election results, RBI MPC, etc usually markets get into a panic mode and investors get jittery. Rs 500 crore is not that large amount of money in such volatile days, so yesterday this is what happened. Whatever capital these market makers had, got exhausted. This is why NAV of ETF units got haywire. On usual trading days this problem is non-existent," says the head of passive investments of a mutual fund house.

What is the solution to this problem?

As per the head of the passive investments of a mutual fund house quoted earlier, the solution to this problem could be to encourage more active participation of stockbrokers as market makers. "SEBI should also allow AMCs to do market making on their own. Mutual fund schemes have AUM so SEBI should allow the mutual fund scheme to create units in ETFs," the person cited above said.

How does NAV work for mutual funds and ETFs?

As per a SEBI circular dated May 23, 2022, mutual fund houses must publish indicative NAVs on their websites for ETFs. i-NAV is the real time value of one unit of the ETF shown during trading hours. However, the price you see on the stock market is the market price of the said ETF. The market price of an ETF depends on various factors like volatility, demand, news, etc. If there is high volatility in the market, the price of the ETF is bound to fluctuate rapidly based on changes in the prices of underlying shares.

As per Ksh*tiz Jain, CFA FRM, Co-Founder,CAGRfunds, a wealth management company, "For equity ETFs, the i-NAV would be declared within a maximum time lag of 15 seconds from the underlying market. For debt ETFs, the i-NAV would be declared at least four times in a day with a minimum time lag of 90 minutes between the two disclosures."

How much did the indicative NAV of ETF vary from their real-time price?

The iNAV of an ETF can help investors gauge its value before buying or selling it. For example, the iNAV of JUNIORBEES as of June 5, 2024, 8pm, is Rs 710.5366, as per the Nippon Mutual Fund website. However, the closing price of NIFTYBEES on June 5, 2024, on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) was Rs 713 as of 3.30 pm.

As per data shared by Zerodha on X (formerly Twitter), JUNIORBEES had an iNAV of Rs 699.85 at a particular point of time on June 5, 2024, however it was being traded at Rs 705.08 at that time. So, if you wanted to buy JUNIORBEES you had to pay Rs 5.23 (approx) extra per unit of the ETF.

Zerodha

Picture showing the real time NAV of some ETFs. Source: Zerodha on X.

Zerodha

Picture showing the real time iNAV of some of the ETFs. Source: Zerodha on X.

How to check i-NAV of ETFs?

Every mutual fund company will publish its ETF's i-NAV value on a real time basis on its website. For example, Nippon Mutual Fund's i-NAV can be viewed here: https://mf.nipponindiaim.com/FundsAndPerformance/Pages/INAV.aspx
Motilal Oswal: https://www.motilaloswalmf.com/etf

Some stock brokers like Zerodha also show the i-NAV price on its app. "To add iNAVs to your Kite marketwatch search for ETF Name NAV," said Zerodha on X.

Motilal Oswal Mutual Fund

Source: Motilal Oswal website as of June 5, 2024 9.22pm

What should you do if you want to invest in ETFs?

There are two types of investors: short-term traders and long-term investors. Experts advise what both types of investors should do in such situations.

Long-term investors: As per Jain, before buying or selling an ETF, you should compare the i-NAV with the market NAV price of the ETF. While buying the ETF check if the market price is lower or close to the I-NAV price and while selling check if the price is higher or close to the i-NAV price. For retail investors, it would be advisable to invest via the index mutual fund route instead of the ETF. "The buying and selling in an index fund would be done as per the day-end NAV of the fund, so the investor need not worry about the intraday price movement or the mismatch between i-NAV or market price," he says.

Stock market traders: "When authorised participants create or redeem large ETF blocks, temporary imbalances between supply and demand can arise, causing short-term premiums or discounts. The price discrepancies between iNAV and market NAV price can present arbitrage opportunities for sophisticated traders. Arbitrage involves exploiting price inefficiencies across markets to lock in risk-free profits," says Goel.