The study investigates the impact of financial distress (credit spread) and liquidity crises (TED spread) on size, value, profitability, investment and momentum premiums within the US Real Estate Investment Trust market. Using daily data from 2001 to 2020, we examine the presence, magnitude and significance of these premiums, along with assessing if these premiums are associated with higher risk. The study then employs Auto-regressive distributed lag and Error Correction Modeling to establish the long/short-run impact of financial distress and liquidity crisis on these premiums during recessionary and non-recessionary phases, including COVID-19. Premiums associated with all five factors are positive and significant. Secondly, in contradiction to the Efficient Market Hypothesis, we find that value and momentum portfolios provide superior returns without exposing investors to higher risk while portfolios based on size, profitability and investment, do tend to expose investors to a higher risk. Thirdly, in contradiction to the risk based explanation of Fama–French/Carhart (2015/1997), we find significant evidence of a fall in profitability and momentum premiums with an uptick in financial distress and liquidity crisis. On the other hand, size, value and investment premiums rise with financial distress/liquidity crisis, only during the recessionary phases. This impact is insignificant during non-recessionary phases.

We examine the impact of oil price and oil price volatility on US illiquidity premiums (return on illiquid-minus-liquid stocks), using the US Oil Fund options implied volatility OVX index. We use daily data from 2007 to 2018, taking into account the structural break in June 2009 and controlling for macroeconomic factors. Both OLS and VAR models indicate that oil price has a significantly positive impact and OVX has a significantly negative impact on premiums, for the full sample and post-crisis period. These relationships are potentially driven by investor sentiments and market liquidity. Oil price has a negative impact on premiums during the crisis period. Using an autoregressive distribution lag model and an error correction model, we analyse long- and short-run elasticities. We find that oil price has a significantly positive impact on premiums both in the long- and short-run, for the full sample and post-crisis period. OVX only has a significantly negative impact in the short-run for the full sample. The reverting mechanism to establish long-run equilibrium is effective for the full sample and post-crisis period. Illiquidity premiums do not show any asymmetric responses to oil price changes but we do find evidence of asymmetric response to OVX changes.