Transmission of Stock Returns and Volatility between the U.S. and Japan: Evidence from the Stock Index Futures Markets

In this paper, we examine the nature of transmission of stock returns and volatility between the U.S. and Japanese stock markets using futures prices on the S&P 500 and Nikkei 225 stock indexes. We use stock index futures prices to mitigate the stale quote problem found in the spot index prices and to obtain more robust results. By employing a two-step GARCH approach, we find that there are unidirectional contemporaneous return and volatility spillovers from the U.S. to Japan. Furthermore, the U.S.'s influence on Japan in returns is approximately four times as large as the other way around. Finally, our results show no significant lagged spillover effects in both returns and volatility from the Osaka market to the Chicago market, while a significant lagged volatility spillover is observed from the U.S. to Japan. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Global asset prices and FOMC announcements

This paper analyzes the impact of U.S. monetary policy announcement surprises on foreign equity indexes, short- and long-term interest rates, and exchange rates in 49 countries. We use two proxies for monetary policy surprises: the surprise change to the current target federal funds rate (target surprise) and the revision to the expected path of future monetary policy (path surprise). We find that different asset classes respond to different components of the monetary policy surprises. Global equity indexes respond mainly to the target surprise; exchange rates and long-term interest rates respond mainly to the path surprise; and short-term interest rates respond to both surprises. On average, a hypothetical surprise 25-basis-point cut in the federal funds target rate is associated with about a 1 percent increase in foreign equity indexes and a 5 basis point decline in foreign short-term interest rates. A surprise 25-basis-point downward revision in the expected path of future policy is associated with about a ½ percent decline in the exchange value of the dollar against foreign currencies and 5 and 8 basis point declines in short- and long-term interest rates, respectively. We also find that asset prices’ responses to FOMC announcements vary greatly across countries, and that these cross-country variations in the response are related to a country’s exchange rate regime. Equity indexes and interest rates in countries with a less flexible exchange rate regime respond more to U.S. monetary policy surprises. In addition, the cross-country variation in the equity market response is strongly related to the percentage of each country’s equity market capitalization owned by U.S. investors. This result suggests that investors’ asset holdings may play a role in transmitting monetary policy surprises across countries.     

News announcements and price discovery in foreign exchange spot and futures markets

This paper studies competition in price discovery between spot and futures rates for the EUR–USD and JPY–USD markets around scheduled macroeconomic announcements. Using both the information shares approach and the common factor component weight approach for futures prices from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), as well as deal prices from spot trading on the Electronic Broking Services (EBS), we gauge how foreign exchange spot and futures markets respond to news surprises. The results show that the spot rates provide more price discovery than do the CME futures rates overall; however, the contribution of the futures rates to price discovery increases in the time surrounding macroeconomic announcement releases.     

基于波动效应与价格发现的期指仿真交易研究

沪深300股指期货仿真交易的推出,对我国现货市场的影响如何以及这种影响是否有利于现货效率的改进。首次采用修正的GARCH模型和向量误差修正模型（VEC）将股指期货推出后现货市场波动性的变化和股指期货与现货市场的价格发现功能结合起来进行对比研究。结果表明,期指仿真交易的推出对于现货市场效率的改进确实存在正面的影响。其引入在短期内加大了现货市场的波动,但这一波动正是市场信息流动加速的反映,因而提高了市场信息的传递效率。同时期货价格领先于现货价格,存在由期货市场到现货市场长期的单向因果关系,说明期货价格具有引导现货价格向均衡方向调整的功能,从而在经验上支持了股指期货市场的开放政策。     

Dynamic volatility spillovers across oil and natural gas futures markets based on a time-varying spillover method

This paper analyzes dynamic volatility spillovers between four major energy commodities (i.e., crude oil, gasoline, heating oil and natural gas) in the oil-natural gas future markets. We construct a time-varying spillover method by combining the TVP-VAR-SV model and the spillover method of Diebold and Yilmaz (2009, 2012, 2014). We use the spillover method to obtain time-varying total, directional and pairwise volatility spillover indices. Our results summarize as follows: (1) The volatility spillover indices present peaks and troughs during some periods, such as shale gas revolution, financial crisis, and oil price crash; (2) After the U.S. shale gas revolution, the size of volatility spillover from natural gas future market has reduced sharply, but volatility doesn't decouple from the other three oil future markets; (3) The directional spillover is asymmetric. The crude oil and heating oil futures market are main net transmitter of volatility risk information, while the gasoline and natural gas futures markets are the net receiver; (4) For natural gas future market, the pairwise volatility spillover from crude oil future market has the most significant influence.     

限制交易政策如何影响期现关系?——对股指期货价格发现功能的实证检验

本文利用2015年中国股市大幅下跌期间,对股指期货严格限制交易政策这一独特事件前后的高频数据,研究限制交易政策对股指期货与股票市场价格引导关系的影响。利用I-S模型和分位数回归方法的实证结果表明:限制交易政策实施前,股指期货对股票市场的价格影响更强,尤其表现在价格急剧下跌时期;限制交易政策显著增加了期货市场交易成本,从而降低了期货市场的信息份额,削弱了其对股票市场的价格影响,并且改变了期货价格对现货价格“助跌强于助涨”的影响模式,增强了股指期货在价格上涨时对股票市场的影响。研究结果一方面直接量化了期货交易成本变动对其价格发现功能的负面影响,另一方面也从价格引导关系的视角提供了股市危机时期股指期货限制交易政策监管效果的实证证据。     

Central bank announcements of asset purchases and the impact on global financial and commodity markets

We present evidence on the effects of large-scale asset purchases by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England since 2008. We show that announcements about these purchases led to lower long-term interest rates and depreciations of the U.S. dollar and the British pound on announcement days, while commodity prices generally declined despite this more stimulative financial environment. We suggest that LSAP announcements likely involved signaling effects about future growth that led investors to downgrade their U.S. growth forecasts lowering long-term US yields, depreciating the value of the U.S. dollar, and triggering a decline in commodity prices. Moreover, our analysis illustrates the importance of controlling for market expectations when assessing these effects. We find that positive U.S. monetary surprises led to declines in commodity prices, even as long-term interest rates fell and the U.S. dollar depreciated. In contrast, on days of negative U.S. monetary surprises, i.e. when markets evidently believed that monetary policy was less stimulatory than expected, long-term yields, the value of the dollar, and commodity prices all tended to increase.     

Cojumping: Evidence from the US Treasury bond and futures markets

The basis between spot and future prices will be affected by jump behavior in each asset price, challenging intraday hedging strategies. Using formal cojumping tests this paper considers the cojumping behavior of spot and futures prices in high frequency US Treasury data. Cojumping occurs most frequently at shorter maturities and higher sampling frequencies. We find that the probability of cojumping is altered by the presence of an anticipated macroeconomic news announcement. The probability of cojumping is particularly affected by news surprises in non-farm payrolls, CPI, GDP and retail sales. However, the two cojumping tests are also more likely to provide contradictory results in the presence of surprises in non-farm payrolls. On these occasions the market does not clearly signal its short term pricing behavior.     

Financial contagion: A local correlation analysis

Local correlation is used to examine financial contagion. We share the view of previous research that there is contagion from the U.S. spot equity market to that of Germany and Britain. In addition, we provide evidence to suggest contagion from the U.S. spot equity market to that of Japan and Hong Kong. Furthermore, we have detected contagion from U.S. futures to other futures markets. However, there is no reverse contagion from any of the German, British, Japanese, and Hong Kong spot or index futures markets to those of the U.S. The results have international diversification, portfolio management, and within-industry implications.     

Price dynamics in refined petroleum spot and futures markets

This article characterizes the spot and futures price dynamics of two important physical commodities, gasoline and heating oil. Using a non-linear error correction model with time-varying volatility, we demonstrate many new results. Specifically, the convergence of spot and futures prices is asymmetric, non-linear, and volatility inducing. Moreover, spreads between spot and futures prices explain virtually all spot return volatility innovations for these two commodities, and spot returns are more volatile when spot prices exceed futures prices than when the reverse is true. Furthermore, there are volatility spillovers from futures to spot markets (but not the reverse), futures volatility shocks are more persistent than spot volatility shocks, and the convergence of spot and futures prices is asymmetric and non-linear. These results have important implications. In particular, since the theory of storage implies that spreasd vary with fundamental supply and demand factors, the strong relation between spreads and volatility suggests that these fundamentals — rather than trading induced noise — are the primary determinants of spot price volatility. The volatility spillovers, differences in volatility persistence, and lead-lag relations are consistent with the view that the futures market is the primary locus of informed trading in refined petroleum product markets. Finally, our finding that error correction processes may be non-linear, asymmetric, and volatility inducing suggests that traditional approaches to the study of time series dynamics of variables that follow a common stochastic trend that ignore these complexities may be mis-specified.     

Limits to arbitrage and hedging: Evidence from commodity markets

We build an equilibrium model of commodity markets in which speculators are capital constrained, and commodity producers have hedging demands for commodity futures. Increases in producers' hedging demand or speculators' capital constraints increase hedging costs via price-pressure on futures. These in turn affect producers' equilibrium hedging and supply decision inducing a link between a financial friction in the futures market and the commodity spot prices. Consistent with the model, measures of producers' propensity to hedge forecasts futures returns and spot prices in oil and gas market data from 1979 to 2010. The component of the commodity futures risk premium associated with producer hedging demand rises when speculative activity reduces. We conclude that limits to financial arbitrage generate limits to hedging by producers, and affect equilibrium commodity supply and prices.     

Arbitrage, Risk Premium, and Cointegration Tests of the Efficiency of Futures Markets

This article provides a new perspective on the efficiency of futures markets in a cointegration framework. Under the conventional risk premium hypothesis, if futures and spot prices are non-stationary, they must be cointegrated if futures markets are efficient. Alternatively, the cost-of-carry model implies that there should be a cointegration relationship among spot prices, futures prices and interest rates assuming all the series contain a unit root. Market efficiency further implies specific parameter restrictions under these two models. Using data on the futures markets for gold, silver, palladium and platinum, this article first establishes that interest rates, spot and futures prices are unit root non-stationary. The evidence on cointegration is somewhat mixed: the gold futures market is consistent with the cost-of-carry model, and the silver futures market satisfies the risk premium hypothesis, but the evidence for the other two markets is inconclusive.     

Monte Carlo valuation of natural gas investments

In this evaluation of energy assets related to natural gas, our particular focus is on a base load natural gas combined cycle power plant and a liquefied natural gas facility in a realistic setting. We also value several American-type investment options following the least squares Monte Carlo approach. We calibrate mean-reverting stochastic processes for gas and electricity prices by using data from NYMEX NG futures contracts and the Spanish wholesale electricity market, respectively. Additional sources of uncertainty concern the initial investment outlay, or the option's time to maturity, or the cost of CO₂ emission permits.     

U.S. Monetary Policy Surprises and International Securitized Real Estate Markets

This paper examines the impact of U.S. monetary policy surprises on securitized real estate markets in 18 countries. The policy surprises are measured by both the surprise changes to the target federal funds rate (the target factor) and surprises in the future direction of the Federal Reserve monetary policy (the path factor). The results show that most international securitized real estate markets have significantly positive responses to surprise decrease in current or future expected federal funds rates, though such responses vary greatly across countries. Also, while the U.S. securitized real estate market reacts mainly to the target factor, foreign securitized real estate markets react to the path factor. Furthermore, we find that the cross-country variation in the response to the target factor is correlated with the country’s exchange rate regime and its degree of real economic and particularly financial integration, while the cross-country variation in the response to the path factor is mainly related to the country’s degree of financial integration.     

Informed Futures Trading and Price Discovery: Evidence from Taiwan Futures and Stock Markets

This article focuses on the information effects between the futures market and its spot market. Intraday data are used to investigate the lead-lag relationships between the returns and trading activity of Taiwan stock index futures and the spot returns. We focus on the transmission direction and the sources of information. Consistent with most previous studies, our results show that other than the contemporaneous relationship predicted by carry-cost theory and efficient market theory, futures returns significantly lead spot returns, which implies that informed trades may occur in the futures market. Using private transaction information, net open buy, as a proxy for futures trading activity and distinguishing different types of futures traders, we find that foreign institutional traders are the major source of informed trades because their trading has predictive power for future movements in both spot and futures prices. Traders in other categories are information laggards.     

美元贬值和石油价格变动相关性的实证分析

进入新世纪以来,由于各种因素导致美元不断贬值,与此形成鲜明对比的是,石油价格一路飙升。那么,美元汇率和石油价格之间是否存在着某种因果关系呢?由于期货市场具有价格发现功能。本文以最具代表性的美国纽约商品交易所的原油期货价格为研究对象,分析美元贬值和石油价格之间的关系。本文首先定性分析美元贬值导致石油价格上涨的传导机制,然后利用模型对相关数据进行实证分析。研究结果表明,石油期货价格的上涨,除了有美元指数的影响之外,更重要的原因是前期石油期货价格上涨对本期石油期货价格上涨有正向的推动作用。     

Price Discovery,Causality and Forecasting in the Freight Futures Market

This paper investigates the causal relationship between futures and spot prices in the freight futures market. Being a thinly traded market whose underlying asset is a service, sets it apart from other markets investigated so far in the literature. Causality tests, generalised impulse response analysis and forecasting performance evaluation indicate that futures prices tend to discover new information more rapidly than spot prices. Revisions in the composition of the underlying index to make it more homogeneous, have strengthened the price discovery role of futures prices. The information incorporated in futures prices, when formulated as a VECM, produces more accurate forecasts of spot prices than the VAR, ARIMA and random-walk models, over several steps ahead. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

What role do futures markets play in Bitcoin pricing? Causality,cointegration and price discovery from a time-varying perspective?

Recent papers that have explored spot and futures markets for Bitcoin have concluded that price discovery takes place either in the spot, or the futures market. Here, we consider the robustness of previous price discovery conclusions by investigating causal relationships, cointegration and price discovery between spot and futures markets for Bitcoin, using appropriate daily data and time-varying mechanisms. We apply the time-varying Granger causality test of Shi, Phillips, and Hurn [2018]; time-varying cointegration tests of Park and Hahn [1999], and time-varying information share methodologies, concluding that futures prices Granger cause spot prices and that futures prices dominate the price discovery process.     

Beyond Basis Basics: Liquidity Demand and Deviations from the Law of One Price

Deviations from the law of one price between futures and spot prices—the futures-cash basis—capture information about liquidity demand for equity market exposure in global markets. We show that the basis comoves with dealer and investor futures positions, is contemporaneously positively correlated with futures and spot market returns, and negatively predicts futures and spot returns. These findings are consistent with the futures-cash basis reflecting liquidity demand that is common to futures and cash equity markets. We find persistent supply-demand imbalances for equity index exposure reflected in the basis, giving rise to an annual premium of 5% to 6%.     

Information,uncertainty, and behavioral effects: Evidence from abnormal returns around real estate investment trust earnings announcements

In this study, we examine the influence of real estate market sentiment, market-level uncertainty, and REIT-level uncertainty on cumulative abnormal earnings announcement returns over the 1995–2009 time period. We first document the relative coverage of analysts' earnings forecasts on U.S. REITs, as well as REITs from several countries (i.e., Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Japan, the Netherlands, and UK). We show that coverage outside of the U.S. is limited, and we consequently focus our analysis on U.S. REITs. We find strong evidence that earnings announcements contain pricing relevant information, with positive (negative) earnings surprises relative to analysts' forecasts resulting in significantly positive (negative) abnormal returns around the announcement date. Consistent with the findings from the broader equity market literature, we find limited evidence of a pre-announcement drift in the cumulative abnormal returns. However, in sharp contrast to the existing equity literature, we find no evidence of a post-earnings announcement drift in our aggregate sample or when the sample is restricted to the largest negative surprises. We find evidence of a post-earnings announcement drift for only the largest positive earnings surprises. These results are consistent with REIT returns more quickly impounding information relative to the broader equity market, in part because of the parallel private real estate market and because of the U.S. REIT structure and information environment. Finally, in our conditional regression analysis of cumulative abnormal returns, we find that real estate investor sentiment, market-wide uncertainty, and firm-level uncertainty significantly affect the magnitude of abnormal announcement returns and also influence the effect of unexpected earnings on abnormal returns.