Liquidity Transformation Risks in U.S. Bank Loan and High-Yield Mutual Funds: A 2026 Update

Abstract

Mutual funds (MFs) and other open-ended collective investment funds engage in liquidity transformation—they offer investors daily redemptions while investing in assets that may take longer than a day to sell without significant price impact. This activity is particularly salient for corporate debt funds, where large investor redemptions during stress periods could result in fire sales that adversely affect underlying markets (see, e.g., Goldstein, Jiang, and Ng, 2017; Chernenko and Sunderam, 2020; Falato, Goldstein, and Hortaçsu, 2021; Federal Reserve Board, 2025).