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Index effect

The tendency of stocks to rise on news of index addition and fall on deletion, driven by mandatory passive flows rather than by any change in the business.

The effect was very large decades ago and has shrunk as arbitrageurs learned to front-run it, but it has not disappeared for names where the required trade is large relative to liquidity. Much of the announcement pop is now given back within a month, which turns the trade into a short-horizon liquidity event rather than a lasting revaluation.

Deletions are often the stronger side. Forced selling into a falling, illiquid stock has fewer natural buyers than forced buying into a rising one.

Example: a stock jumps 7.2% on announcement, adds another 3% into the effective date, then falls 6.5% over the following three weeks. A buyer at the announcement close who held a month captured about 3.7%, not 10%.

Related: index-inclusion, index-rebalance, closing-auction, index-reconstitution, index-provider

See it drawn

Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.

Bid-ask spread in an order bookSell orders stacked above buy orders with a gap between the best of each.SELLERS (asks)50.0690050.051,40050.0460050.011,10050.002,30049.99800spread = 0.03BUYERS (bids)
The bid-ask spread. Buy orders sit below, sell orders above, and the gap between the best bid (50.01) and best ask (50.04) is the spread you pay to cross. Bar length shows the size resting at each price.

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