THE ASYMMETRIC IMPACT OF “INFORMATIVE” AND “UNINFORMATIVE” FEDERAL OPEN MARKET COMMITTEE STATEMENTS ON ASSET PRICES

This paper examines the effect of the information content of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) statements on the level and volatility of Treasuries and stock returns. Statements are separated into “informative” and “uninformative” groups with informative statements delivering important information which was not previously anticipated by the consensus. We find evidence that the information content of FOMC statements tends to generate an asymmetric response, with informative statements having a larger effect than uninformative statements. Asymmetries tend to be more pronounced for the conditional mean than conditional volatility. The behavior of volatility is tent‐shaped, spiking during policy announcements and declining before and after the release. We also find that the evolution of the language of the FOMC statements does matter to market participants and that joint releases of target rate changes and informative statements have a distinctly more pronounced impact than other types of announcements. (JEL E52, E58, E65, G12, G14)     

On the Effects of Asset Purchase Programs on Emerging Stock Markets

ABSTRACT

It is well documented that there has been a relationship between stock markets and unconventional monetary policies. However, most research concentrates on developed economies and analyzes the effects of shocks from such polices on stock prices. This paper is different from this research in that we investigate the impact of surprises from the Fed’s and the ECB’s announcements on the stock returns and volatility in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries using GARCH models. We find that a positive surprise associated with a fall in the U.S. Treasury yield causes an increase in ADX returns. We show significant effects of the ECB’s shocks on price returns. In particular, announcement that induces a decline in yield spreads in Italian sovereign bonds leads to higher stock prices. We also document a significant impact of surprises both by the Fed and ECB on volatility. However, the estimates are mixed. We note that volatility went down in response to the ECB’s policies, while they increased after the Fed’s asset purchases. Finally, when we distinguish surprises by their sign, the GJR-GARCH model estimates indicate that the effect on the volatility which is, perhaps surprisingly, symmetric for both types of news.     

Financial market effects of FOMC projections

I examine the impact of the forecasts released by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in the Summary of Economic Projections over the period of April 2011 through March 2019. I find that changes in the median FOMC federal funds rate forecast did impact asset prices, but forecasts of output and inflation did not have any effect, which may be surprising based on the literature regarding the “Fed information effect” channel. Further, the dispersion in the federal funds rate forecast does not affect asset prices though it does impact the degree of uncertainty regarding future monetary policy. Finally, I find that most of forward guidance can be summarized through the change in the median federal funds rate forecast for the end of the following year.     

The High‐Frequency Responses of Australian Financial Futures to Unexpected Cash Rate Announcements*

This study examines the high‐frequency responses of Australian financial futures to monetary surprises using intra‐day futures data. Using the event window method with tick data to control for the endogeneity between market interest rates and the cash rate, our empirical findings support the following. First, monetary policy announcements significantly impact not only short‐term interest rate futures but also longer‐term treasury security future markets. Second, the most significant responses of these markets occur in the event window that contains the policy announcement. Third, we also find that the monetary policy is not well anticipated by market participants until the Reserve Bank of Australia’s policy release.     

中美货币政策变动与国内资产价格调控

后金融危机时代,美国持续量化宽松货币政策所带来的溢出效应已对中国资产价格调整产生实质性影响;美国货币政策变动后可通过利率和国际资本流入进行传导,能直接引起中国股票市场价格的剧烈波动并间接推动房地产价格的上涨;在中国房地产市场正处于深度调控背景下,美国货币政策的进一步放宽将对中国货币政策的适度紧缩形成强烈制约,使中国资产价格调控面临巨大的风险和隐患。     

Effects of US interest rates and news on the daily interest rates of a highly indebted emerging economy: evidence from Turkey

It has been widely demonstrated that asset prices react sensitively to macroeconomic news releases both in the industrialized countries and emerging markets. However, there are contradicting results on the effects of changes in interest rates of industrialized countries on asset prices of emerging markets. In heavily indebted economies, in addition to these factors, political news and announcements from international institutions that may increase or decrease concerns about debt sustainability can affect asset prices as well. This potential notwithstanding, there has been relatively limited empirical work on the effects of such variables. The objective of this study is to quantify the impact of all of these factors on interest rates of a highly indebted emerging economy. Using daily post-crisis data of the Turkish economy we show that both good and bad political news, International Monetary Fund announcements, and European Union related news significantly affected secondary market government securities yields, whereas volatility of yields was affected mainly by bad news releases. Changes in US Treasury bond rates and ‘appetite’ for risk of foreign investors did not affect government securities yields in the period analysed.     

股票市场上利率政策公告效应实证研究

货币政策信息作为一种对整个市场或者整个行业都产生影响的宏观信息以及同时为市场参与者获知的公共信息,其信息的公布必将对股票市场的价格行为产生影响。把利率政策作为货币政策信息的代表,可以用来测度利率政策公告的即期效应,借鉴这样的思路,我们选用事件研究法方法来研究我国存贷款利率调整对股票市场的公告效应,发现存贷款利率调整宣告会对股票市场的价格和波动产生显著的影响,但利率调整宣告对股票市场的影响并不确定。     

Stochastic and structural fiscal policy in a monetary stationary economy

In the framework of a monetary asset pricing model which is simple enough to generate closed form formulae for equilibrium price functions the interactions between output, fiscal policy, and asset markets is investigated. With money yielding liquidity services in the exchange process real stock prices are negatively correlated with anticipated (stochastic) fiscal policy changes, while the impact of unanticipated (structural) fiscal policy on the stock market depends qualitatively on the ‘business cycle’ of the economy. It is shown that the monetary character of the economy, more precisely the role of money in the exchange process, is critical for the relationship between fiscal policy and real share prices. Moreover, while contingent fiscal policy measures may be successful in stabilizing the real interest rate on money they are incapable of achieving a stable term structure of the real rate on stocks. In contrast, uncontingently higher public expenditures generally promote the volatility of the real rates on financial assets.     

货币政策对资产价格冲击效果透视

文章在VECM模型的基础上,运用脉冲响应方法分析了股票市场在低迷时期和膨胀时期对不同货币政策冲击响应的效果。结果表明:货币政策可以有效地调节资产价格,在资产价格低迷阶段,用利率调节具有相对持久和明显的作用,金融机构贷款也在推动股票价格上涨中起到了一定的作用;在资产价格膨胀阶段,利率可在一定时期内起到微调作用,控制货币供应量可对价格泡沫的控制起到即时效果。     

流动性约束与货币政策的资产价格效应

本文在新凯恩斯主义分析框架下,基于一个动态随机模型探讨了代理人消费流动性约束下的货币政策的资产价格效应,得到下列结论：资产价格波动通过财富效应影响代理人的消费。以利率为操作目标的最优货币政策应对股价、房价等资产价格波动做出反应,而其反应强度依赖于受流动性约束的代理人所占的比重。由于资产价格波动导致了流动性约束的时变性,最优利率规则对股价、房价等资产价格波动的最优权重也具有时变性。本文的实证分析表明,我国央行对房价和股价波动的利率调整具有时变性,以及此次金融危机爆发期间显现的这种时变性特征,与本文理论分析结果相吻合。     

The Impact of Monetary Surprises on Australian Financial Futures Markets: An Insight into Cash Rate Target Announcements

This paper investigates the impact of unanticipated Australian monetary policy changes on AUD/USD exchange rate futures, and 3‐year and 10‐year Australian Treasury bond futures, during the period from January 1997 to April 2010. Our study contributes to the literature by using both the 30‐day and the 90‐day bank accepted bill (BAB) rates to disentangle the unexpected surprise component of monetary policy changes from overall cash rate target changes in the Australian money market, and by concurrently modelling the effects of monetary surprises and other key macroeconomic announcements in Australia. The empirical results suggest that the 30‐day BAB rate is the best proxy for the expected monetary policy actions. We find that the effect of monetary surprises on the volatility of the 3‐ and 10‐year bond future instruments is significant and persistent. We have also documented a strong monetary policy effect on the mean returns of the exchange rate futures, indicating that unexpected monetary policy adjustments have a significant impact on the level of the exchange rate movements rather than on the volatility of the FX futures market.     

Inflation Expectations and Monetary Policy Surprises*

We estimate monetary policy surprises for European consumers over time, based on monetary policy changes that were unanticipated according to consumers’ stated beliefs. We find that such monetary policy surprises have the opposite impact on inflation expectations from the impact found when assuming that consumers are well informed. Relaxing the latter assumption by focusing on consumers’ stated beliefs, unanticipated increases in the interest rate raise inflation expectations before the 2008 financial crisis. This is consistent with imperfect information theoretical settings where interest rate hikes are interpreted as positive news about the state of the economy by consumers who know that policymakers have relatively more information.     

Inflation news and stock returns: market direction and flow-through ability

Previous studies of the short-run response of daily stock prices to announcements of macroeconomic news could be biased when responses in different scenarios cancel each other out. In our analysis of inflation news in the Spanish stock market, we consider market direction arguments and implement our study based on the sector of activity to control for the ‘flow-through’ ability of the firms in each industry. In general, our results are quite consistent with the ‘market direction’ and the ‘flow-through’ hypotheses. Unanticipated inflation news implies abnormal returns depending on the direction of the news, the state of the economy and the flow-through ability of the sector. The impact of positive surprises affects the abnormal returns of many more sectors than does the impact of negative surprises, especially in the low states of economy. These significant effects are mainly observed in industries that are characterised by low flow-through ability.     

资产价格与货币政策

随着资本市场的发展和金融资产存量的增加 ,资产价格的波动对货币政策提出了诸多挑战。本文讨论了资产价格与货币政策目标的关系 ;资产价格在货币政策传导过程中对消费、投资和金融体系的影响 ;以及货币政策操作中有关资产价格的争论 ;最后提出了这一研究领域中存在的问题     

TALKING LESS AND MOVING THE MARKET MORE: EVIDENCE FROM THE ECB AND THE FED

This paper examines and compares the communication strategies of the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, and their effectiveness. First, we find that the surprise components of both monetary policy actions and statements have important but differing effects on asset prices, with unexpected communication having a much greater impact on longer‐term interest rates. Second, both the ECB and the Fed have proven to be equally successful in moving their domestic asset prices using either monetary policy or news shocks. However, the response of the American yield curve to the surprise component of Fed's statements is larger than the reaction of the European term structure to ECB's announcements. This result is intimately related to the amplitude of the policy rate cycle that is much larger in the US than in the euro area combined with the bounded support of the news shock. Third, we analyze the cross‐effects and show that the Fed has been more able to move the European interest rates of all maturities than the ECB to move American rates. This finding is tied to the predominance of dollar fixed income assets rather than to an attempt of the ECB to mimic the Fed.     

Global Investment Environment of the Post‐Quantitative Easing World: The ‘new‐old’ and ‘new‐new’ Normal

Global markets since late 2007 are not ‘normal’, where normal means market conditions we would expect to observe going forward in the absence of any new economic shocks. Financial markets have been dominated by extraordinary central bank policies that were created to deal with challenging market conditions reflecting heightened risk aversion and illiquidity. Markets in the future will have some characteristics that look more like the market conditions observed in the pre‐crisis period, which I call the ‘new‐old normal’ and other conditions that differ from the past, which I call the ‘new‐new normal’. I first review what happened during the financial crisis in terms of developments in three asset classes, equities, fixed income and currencies, to place the forward‐looking view in proper context. Then the transition period from the quantitative easing (QE) era of exceptional monetary policy to post‐QE markets is discussed. Post‐transition, we will see some features of the post‐QE world that will resemble pre‐crisis market conditions, the ‘new‐old normal’ with higher policy interest rates, wider cross‐country interest differentials, lower cross‐asset return correlations and a resurgence of the importance of cross‐country differences in fundamentals in international investing. However, some features of the post‐QE investment environment will be unlike anything observed in the past: the ‘new‐new normal’ with reduced liquidity and more days of exceptionally large volatility and asset price moves due to regulatory effects resulting in a reduced ability of market‐makers to provide inventory buffers for counterparties and electronic trading venues that shut down trading in high volatility periods; low inflation; flatter yield curves; and emerging markets providing less opportunity for diversification gains as they converge to developed financial market characteristics.     

OPTIMAL MONETARY POLICY AND ASSET PRICE MISALIGNMENTS

This paper analyses the relationship between monetary policy and asset prices in the context of optimal policy rules. The transmission mechanism is represented by a linearized rational expectations model augmented for the effect of asset prices on aggregate demand. Stabilization objectives are represented by a discounted quadratic loss function penalizing inflation and output gap volatility. Asset prices are allowed to deviate from their intrinsic value due to momentum trading. We find that in the presence of wealth effects and inefficient markets, asset price misalignments from their fundamentals should be included in the optimal interest rate reaction function.     

Effects of explicit FOMC policy-rate guidance on equities and risk measures

We quantify the impact of explicit Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy-rate guidance used as an unconventional monetary-policy tool at the zero lower bound of the policy rate on US equity prices, as well as on the risk indicators of credit and CDS spreads, implied volatilities and US equity index risk reversals. We find that explicit FOMC policy-rate guidance announcements at the zero lower bound led to a significant increase in US equity prices, for an aggregate equity index as well as for US commercial bank and US nonfinancial equities. Moreover, we find that they led to a significant reduction in some credit spreads. They also led to a significant reduction in an implied volatility index for US government bonds, as well as in the absolute value of US equity risk reversals, implying a lower perceived risk attached to a large fall in the equity index.     

股票价格、实体经济与货币政策研究——基于我国1997-2011年的经验证据

本文运用格兰杰因果关系检验和向量自回归方法分析了1997年1月至2011年6月我国股票价格、GDP、通货膨胀率和货币政策的关系,实证结果表明,在中国,股票价格对通货膨胀的效应为正向,即股市上涨能带动通货膨胀水平的上涨。股票市场对GDP的影响短期内主要表现为替代效应,长期来看,则是财富效应和投资效应占主导;同时,货币供应量和利率对股票价格均有影响,但影响均不显著。通过格兰杰因果关系检验发现,利率变动导致货币供应量和股票价格发生变化。而货币供应量的变化影响着通货膨胀,也一定程度影响利率和股票价格。通过广义脉冲响应发现,中国人民银行紧缩性的利率政策并不能抑制股票价格上涨。增加货币供给短期内能够推动股市上涨,但长期对股市仍没有效果。     

EFFECTS ON INTEREST RATES OF IMMEDIATELY RELEASING FOMC DIRECTIVES

Prior to February 1994, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) did not officially release its current Domestic Policy Directives to the public until after the next FOMC meeting, a lag of approximately 45 days. Thus, the public never knew the FOMC's latest decisions about short-run monetary policy. On 11 occasions between early 1989 and May 1993, however, the essence of the directives was "leaked" to the Wall Street Journal within one week of an FOMC meeting. This study tests Federal Reserve officials' original assertion that early release of directives would increase volatility in financial markets by creating announcement effects. The study finds some evidence of announcement effects in certain instances, but the assertion that an immediate release would "roil the markets" appears unfounded .