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A flight-to-liquidity is a financial market phenomenon occurring when investors sell what they perceive to be less
liquid A liquid is a nearly incompressible fluid that conforms to the shape of its container but retains a (nearly) constant volume independent of pressure. As such, it is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, gas, an ...
or higher risk investments, and purchase more liquid investments instead, such as US Treasuries. Usually, flight-to-liquidity quickly results in panic leading to a crisis. For example, after the
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eight ...
n government defaulted on its
government bond A government bond or sovereign bond is a form of bond issued by a government to support public spending. It generally includes a commitment to pay periodic interest, called coupon payments'','' and to repay the face value on the maturity dat ...
s ( GKOs) in 1998 many investors sold European and Japanese
government bond A government bond or sovereign bond is a form of bond issued by a government to support public spending. It generally includes a commitment to pay periodic interest, called coupon payments'','' and to repay the face value on the maturity dat ...
s and purchased on-the-run US Treasuries instead. (The most recently issued treasuries, known as “on-the-run”, have larger trading volumes, that is more liquidity, than treasury issues that have been superseded, known as “off-the run”.) This widened the spread between off-the-run and on-the-run US Treasuries, which ultimately led to the 1998 collapse of the
Long-Term Capital Management Long-Term Capital Management L.P. (LTCM) was a highly-leveraged hedge fund. In 1998, it received a $3.6 billion bailout from a group of 14 banks, in a deal brokered and put together by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. LTCM was founded in 1 ...
hedge fund.LTCM case study


See also

*
Financial contagion Financial contagion refers to "the spread of market disturbances mostly on the downside from one country to the other, a process observed through co-movements in exchange rates, stock prices, sovereign spreads, and capital flows". Financial contag ...
*
Financial crisis A financial crisis is any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and man ...
* Flight-to-quality *
Stock market crash A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic decline of stock prices across a major cross-section of a stock market, resulting in a significant loss of paper wealth. Crashes are driven by panic selling and underlying economic factors. They often f ...


References


External links


The Flight-to-Liquidity Premium in U.S. Treasury Bond Prices

Flight to Liquidity Due to Heterogeneity in Investment Horizon
Financial problems Financial markets {{investment-stub