Writing liquidity notes someone else can open
Practical structure for liquidity notes produced in desk sessions — bands, buffers, and handover language for restless markets.
Liquidity notes fail when they read like a diary. They work when a deputy can open them during a thin session and know which sleeve waits and which sleeve moves.
Bands over adjectives
“Fairly liquid” helps no one. At the desk we agree bands — for example ordinary session, multi-day, and process-required — and place each sleeve with a date of last review. The labels are yours; the discipline is that every major holding gets one.
Buffers with a purpose
Cash buffers should name the outflow they protect: school fees, a known capital call, six months of drawings. Untargeted cash often gets spent in calm weeks and is missing in loud ones.
Handover sentences
We prefer sentences such as “Do not initiate sale of Sleeve B without checking the private commitment calendar” over bullet slogans. The note should survive a reader who was not in the room.
When markets are thin
Exit-threshold plans and liquidity notes meet when a price trigger appears on a name that cannot exit in one print. Write the process beside the level. Fictionally clean exits are worse than honest slow ones.