Yesterday (September 22, 2015) the SEC announced proposed rules regarding mutual funds and ETFs aimed at regulating liquidity and redemption risks as well as enhancing disclosures. Included in the 400+ pages of proposed rules and analysis, the SEC focused on swing pricing, a practice to mitigate the impact of forward pricing required under Rule 22c-1 of the Investment Company Act. Before this feels too in the weeds of securities law, let’s discuss what this means. Funds are required to redeem shareholders’ interests at NAV (net asset value pricing), when faced with redemption requests by shareholders wanting to exit the fund. The fund then sells assets to pay the NAV to the departing shareholder or keeps a certain pool of assets liquid to meet such requests. The costs of these trades or lost investment cost of the liquid assets are born by the shareholders who remain in the funds. Additionally, shareholders who purchase new shares of the fund, do so at the daily NAV, which doesn’t reflect the liquidity cost imposed by the departing shareholders. Similarly, when the fund receives the investment of new shareholders, the fund invests that money, but the purchase price NAV does not reflect the trading cost of when the fund purchases new portfolio assets. Consider these helpful examples from the proposed rules:
If a fund has valued portfolio asset X at $10 at the beginning of day 1, and market activity on day 1 (including the fund’s sale of portfolio asset X) decreases the market value of portfolio asset X to $9 at the end of day 1, the fund’s remaining holdings of portfolio asset X at the end of day 1 would be valued at $9 to reflect the asset’s market value on that day. However, staff outreach has shown that it is common industry practice, as permitted by rule 2a-4, for the fund’s current NAV to not reflect the actual price at which the fund has sold the portfolio assets until the next business day following the sale. In the example above, if the fund selling portfolio asset X sold the asset during the day at $8 on day 1, the price that the fund received for these asset sales would not be reflected in the fund’s NAV until day 2. Thus, redeeming shareholders would have received an exit price that would reflect portfolio asset X being valued at the close of the market at $9 on day 1, whereas remaining shareholders would hold shares on day 2 whose value reflects portfolio asset X being sold at $8 (the actual price that the fund received when it sold the asset on day one).
Similarly, as noted above, the price that a purchasing shareholder pays for fund shares normally does not take into account trading and market impact costs that arise when the fund buys portfolio assets to invest the proceeds received from shareholder purchases. ….. the fund’s NAV on day 1 (and the purchase price an incoming shareholder were to receive on day 1) reflects portfolio asset X being valued at $10, but the fund were to purchase additional shares of portfolio asset X on day 2 at $11, the price that a purchasing shareholder pays on day 1 would not reflect the costs of investing the proceeds of the shareholder’s purchases of fund shares. These costs instead would be reflected in the fund’s NAV on days following the shareholder’s purchase, and thus would be borne by all of the investors in the fund, not only the shareholders who purchased on day 1. p.186-187
Shareholders who exit mutual funds pay for none of these transaction costs and entering shareholders only pay a fraction of them. Who foots the long-term bill? The existing fund shareholders do. I wrote about this feature of mutual fund investment here on BLPB last December when I was thinking about the impact of mutual fund investment features on long-term shareholders like retirement and 529 College Plan investors—investors I refer to as Citizen Shareholders in my scholarship.
To address these transaction costs the SEC proposed rule 22c-1(a)(3) to allow for partial swing pricing (not mandating it) when redemptions and purchases exceed a certain threshold. In addition to enhancing the NAV’s reflection of the true value of the fund, swing pricing may deter first mover advantage incentives to redeem shares early in negative liquidity stress. To understand more about liquidity and redemption risks, you can also read the accompanying White Paper from the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis: Liquidity and Flows of U.S. Mutual Funds.
The Commission is seeking comments on the proposed partial swing pricing (and other rule amendment). These changes are proposed in conjunction with other liquidity management tools and disclosure enhancements, features that I hope to highlight here on BLPB in future posts.
For those of you interested in securities laws, this post requires no further explanation or introduction. For readers more concerned with traditional corporate governance, the proposed rules should be of interest to you as well. These rules signal an increased focus by the SEC on mutual funds and ETFs regarding pricing, risk management, and disclosure. Institutional investors wield tremendous voting power and financial clout in public companies– pressures imposed on these investors will be felt secondarily by the operating companies whose stock is held by these funds. If there was ever a meaningful distinction between corporate governance and securities, those boundary lines are under increasing pressure in light of institutional investor ownership trends.
Finally, let me just say that after a long hiatus from blogging….it is good to be back.
-Anne Tucker