Simultaneous monetary policy announcements and international stock markets response: An intraday analysis

This paper investigates the return and volatility response of major European and US equity indices to monetary policy surprises by utilizing extensive intraday data on 5-min price quotes along with a comprehensive dataset on monetary policy decisions and macroeconomic news announcements. The results indicate that the monetary policy decisions generally exert immediate and significant influence on stock index returns and volatilities in both European and the US markets. The findings also show that press conferences held by the European Central Bank (ECB) that follow monetary policy decisions on the same day have a clear impact on European index return volatilities. This implies that they convey additional important information to market participants. Overall, our analysis suggests that the use of high frequency data is critical to separate the effect of monetary policy actions from those of macroeconomic news announcements on stock index returns and volatilities.     

Intraday periodicity, calendar and announcement effects in Euro exchange rate volatility

This paper provides an analysis of intraday volatility using 5-min returns for Euro-Dollar, Euro-Sterling and Euro-Yen exchange rates, and therefore a new market setting. This includes a comparison of the performance of the Fourier flexible form (FFF) intraday volatility filter with an alternative cubic spline approach in the modelling of high frequency exchange rate volatility. Analysis of various potential calendar effects and seasonal chronological changes reveals that although such effects cause deviations from the average intraday volatility pattern, these intraday timing effects are in many cases only marginally statistically significant and are insignificant in economic terms. Results for the cubic spline approach imply that significant macroeconomic announcement effects are larger and far more quickly absorbed into exchange rates than is suggested by the FFF model, and underscores the advantage of the cubic spline in permitting the periodicity in intraday volatility to be more closely identified. Further analysis of macroeconomic announcement effects on volatility by country of origin (including the US, Eurozone, UK, Germany, France and Japan) reveals that the predominant reactions occur in response to US macroeconomic news, but that Eurozone, German and UK announcements also cause significant volatility reactions. Furthermore, Eurozone announcements are found to impact significantly upon volatility in the pre-announcement period.     

Dynamic news effects in high frequency Euro exchange rates

This paper investigates the dynamic, short-run response of Euro exchange rate returns to the information surprise of global macroeconomic announcements. In addition, it advocates a new approach to modelling intraday exchange rate volatility to allow accurate characterisation of reactions. US macroeconomic news generates far more dramatic responses in EUR–USD returns and returns volatility than news on the macroeconomic performance of other countries. However, some Eurozone and German indicators are also important and UK announcements are important for the EUR–GBP rate. The reaction of exchange rate returns to news is very quick and occurs within the first 5 min of the release with very little reaction in the 15 min before and after. These findings show that exchange rates are strongly linked to fundamentals in the 5-min intervals immediately following the data release. Reactions to news are found to vary in magnitude over the sample, with the largest responses to news occurring in response to turning points in the cumulative flow of news.     

Macroeconomic announcements and asymmetric volatility in bond returns

This study analyses the impact of macroeconomic news announcements on the conditional volatility of bond returns. Using daily returns on the 1, 3, 5 and 10 year US Treasury bonds, we find that announcement shocks have a strong impact on the dynamics of bond market volatility. Our results provide empirical evidence that the bond market incorporates the implications of macroeconomic announcement news faster than other information. Moreover, after distinguishing between types of macroeconomic announcements, releases of the employment situation and producer price index are especially influential at the intermediate and long end of the yield curve, while monetary policy seem to affect short-term bond volatility.     

Determinants of periodic volatility of intraday exchange rates in the Taipei FX Market

Using the periodic GARCH (P-GARCH) model, this paper investigates the cause of the volatility seasonality of intraday Taiwan dollar/U.S. dollar (NTD/USD) exchange rate. We study the intraday volatility of NTD/USD exchange rate by considering impacts from public news arrivals, inventory risk and central bank interventions. The estimation results indicate that news arrivals at the market open may induce traders to adjust their inventory position and result in higher NTD/USD volatility on days with reported central bank interventions.     

Do central banks react to the stock market? The case of the Bundesbank

In this paper, we ask whether the Bundesbank, prior to the European Central Bank taking responsibility for monetary policy in 1999, reacted systematically to stock price movements. In contrast to the results for the US, our empirical findings show a generally weak relationship between German stock returns and short-term interest rates at the daily and the monthly frequency. The results are extremely robust to alternative model specifications. The evidence is inconsistent with the hypothesis of a systematic reaction of the Bundesbank to German stock prices. However, we do find that, as in the US, the Bundesbank may have reacted to the stock market crash of 1987 by loosening monetary policy.     

Scheduled domestic and US macroeconomic news and stock valuation in Europe

This paper investigates whether investors on European stock markets regard news announcements about domestic and US macroeconomic variables as an important source of information when valuing stocks. To assess the importance of scheduled domestic and US macroeconomic news announcements, implied volatilities are analyzed on the German and Finnish stock markets. The results show that the US employment report and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting days have a significant impact on implied volatility on both European markets. The domestic news announcements have no effect on implied volatility on either of the markets. The results indicate that the US macroeconomic news announcements are valuable sources of information on European stock markets while domestic news releases seem to be unimportant.     

US macroeconomic news effects around the US and European financial crises: Evidence from Brazilian and Mexican equity indices

We examine the intraday index return and volatility responses of two Latin American equity markets to US macroeconomic news releases around the periods of the US and European financial crises. We find that while index return is more sensitive than volatility to macroeconomic news in general, the five-minute Brazilian and Mexican index volatilities respond especially strongly to US news surprises, with the Brazilian response being more pronounced, especially during the expansion period. Among the macroeconomic indicators tested, FOMC rate decisions exhibit the highest impact on volatility, and there is evidence of asymmetric response to positive versus negative news.     

Intraday volatility responses to monetary policy events

This paper explores the effects of US monetary policy events on intraday volatility in the US equity markets. We examine Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcements as well as real-time changes in market expectations about future policy announcements and their impact on the intraday volatility dynamics of the S&P 500 index. The analysis shows elevated intraday volatility following FOMC announcements through the market close, with a spike at the time of the announcement. We then differentiate the volatility spike by modeling an asymmetric response based on the direction of the actual target rate change. Our results suggest that the size of the volatility spike is dependent on the direction of the rate change, with expansionary monetary policy actions having a larger spike than contractionary policy actions. The duration of these volatility spikes is relatively short-lived, with the spike dampening out within 15 minutes. A more lasting impact is, however, documented for real-time changes in market expectations where the volatility spike tends to persist for at least one hour.     

Intraday jumps and US macroeconomic news announcements

This paper applies recent non-parametric intraday jump detection procedures to investigate the presence and importance of intraday jumps in US futures markets. More importantly, the paper investigates the extent to which statistically significant intraday jumps are associated with US macroeconomic news announcements. Jumps are prevalent, large and contribute heavily to total daily price variation. Approximately one third of jumps correspond to US macroeconomic news announcements, with pure announcement effects causing large increases in the absolute sizes of jumps and the informational surprise of the announcement explaining large proportions of the jumps. The statistical and economic significance of news-related jumps is confirmed by results that show higher volatility persistence, predictability of lower frequency returns, larger effects on microstructure variables, jump clustering and co-jumps from these jumps versus non-news-related jumps, although there are some interesting variations across asset classes.     

Intraday Seasonalities and Macroeconomic News Announcements

Using a data set consisting of more than five years of 5‐minute intraday stock index returns for major European stock indices and US macroeconomic surprises, conditional means and volatility behaviour in European markets were investigated. The findings suggest that the opening of the US stock market significantly raises the level of volatility in Europe, all markets responding in an identical fashion. Furthermore, US macroeconomic surprises exert an immediate and major impact on both the European stock markets’ intraday returns and volatilities. Thus, high frequency data appear to be critical for the identification of news impacting the markets.     

Nominal Interest Rates and the News

This paper provides new estimates of the impact of monetary policy actions and macroeconomic news on the term structure of nominal interest rates. The key novelty is to parsimoniously capture the impact of news on all interest rates using a simple no‐arbitrage model. The different types of news are analyzed in a common framework by recognizing their heterogeneity, which allows for a systematic comparison of their effects. This approach leads to novel empirical findings. First, monetary policy causes a substantial amount of volatility in both short‐term and long‐term interest rates. Second, macroeconomic data surprises have small and mostly insignificant effects on the long end of the term structure. Third, the term‐structure response to macroeconomic news is consistent with considerable interest‐rate smoothing by the Federal Reserve. Fourth, monetary policy surprises are multidimensional while macroeconomic surprises are one‐dimensional.     

The high-frequency response of exchange rates to monetary policy actions and statements

This paper investigates the impact of US monetary policy on the level and volatility of exchange rates using an event study with intraday data for five currencies (the US dollar exchange rate versus the euro, the Canadian dollar, the British pound, the Swiss franc, and the Japanese yen). I construct two indicators of news about monetary policy stemming separately from policy decisions and from balance of risk statements. Estimation results show that both policy decisions and communication have economically large and highly significant effects on the exchange rates, with the surprise component of statements accounting for most of the explainable variation in exchange rate returns in response to monetary policy. This paper also shows that exchange rates tend to absorb FOMC monetary surprises within 30-40 min from the announcement release.     

The intraday determination of liquidity in the NYSE LIFFE equity option markets

We exploit an extensive high-frequency data set of all individual equity options trading at New York Stock Exchange London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (Amsterdam, London and Paris) in order to study the determination of liquidity during the trading day. In particular, we focus on two main aspects of option liquidity: (i) the intraday behaviour of equity option liquidity and its determinants and (ii) the influence of macroeconomic events and commonality on intraday equity option liquidity. Inventory management models cannot explain the intraday variation in option spreads and depths. Instead, we show that the option liquidity measures are strongly correlated with option volatility. Increases in volatility are associated with decreases in liquidity, a finding that is in line with information asymmetry models and the derivatives hedging theory. However, the relationship between spreads and volume varies across the three markets. Option liquidity reacts strongly to macroeconomic news announcements, especially US events. The average systematic liquidity component is 12% for Amsterdam, 14% for London and 16% for Paris.     

The impact of monetary policy surprises on asset return volatility: the case of Germany

This paper investigates the impact of monetary policy surprises by the FED or Bundesbank/ECB on the return volatility of German stocks and bonds using a GARCH-M model. We show that stock return volatility is susceptible to monetary policy surprises in the United States, whereas monetary policy surprises in the Euro zone matter for bond return volatility. These findings are robust for other Euro zone stock markets, but not significant for other Euro zone bond markets. The empirical evidence also suggests that monetary policy surprises have larger effects on German stock return volatility in bear markets than in bull phases. Moreover, our results support the claim that stock return volatility can be negatively correlated with stock returns, contradicting predictions made by many asset pricing models (e.g., CAPM or ICAPM) and the empirical finding of an insignificant relationship often reported in the literature.

The Effect of Monetary Unification on German Bond Markets

We develop a benchmark against which the effects of ECB monetary policy on the German bond market can be evaluated. We first estimate an affine term structure model for the pre‐EMU period linking the German yield curve with the Bundesbank monetary policy. The German monetary policy and its implied yield curve are then reprojected onto the EMU period. The reprojected yield curve differs significantly from the observed one. Short‐term interest rates during the EMU period are significantly lower than they would have been in case the Bundesbank were still in charge of monetary policy. Furthermore, yield spreads increased substantially during the EMU period.     

Model-free jump measures and interest rates: common patterns in US and UK monetary policy around major economic events

We employ model-free jump measures to study monetary policy operations in the UK and USA around major economic events by exploiting the relationship between jumps, interest rates, and macroeconomic news releases related to monetary policy. In our analysis, we explicitly account for the timing of jumps in UK and US interest rates and the correlation across jumps in the same two interest rates and whether these match Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)/Monetary Policy Committee news releases. We find that FOMC news releases lag jumps in US interest rates, but lead jumps in UK Gilt rates. Overall, our analysis suggests that US Treasury Bills react to information in the aforementioned news releases before their announcement while UK Gilt yields react after them and that the Fed and Bank of England react similarly around major economic events.     

Foreign news and the structure of co-movement in European equity markets: An intraday analysis

We investigate European equity market volatility responses to foreign macroeconomic surprises. We measure the length of the response and decompose the news effect into direct and indirect components. The latter is induced by volatility transmission between equity markets. We show that 50 percent of the total accumulated impact of US macroeconomic news on the DAX 30 and CAC 40 volatilities is attained after 90 min. We find that the news announcements have significant direct impacts on both European indices but the indirect effect on the French index is stronger than that on the German.     

Intraday and interday volatility in the Japanese stock market

This paper characterizes the volatility in the Japanese stock market based on a 4-year sample of 5-min Nikkei 225 returns from 1994 through 1997. The intradaily volatility exhibits a doubly U-shaped pattern associated with the opening and closing of the separate morning and afternoon trading sessions on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. This feature is consistent with market microstructure theories that emphasize the role of private and asymmetric information in the price formation process. Meanwhile, readily identifiable Japanese macroeconomic news announcements explain little of the day-to-day variation in the volatility, confirming previous findings for US equity markets. Furthermore, by appropriately filtering out the strong intradaily periodic pattern, the high-frequency returns reveal the existence of important long-memory interdaily volatility dependencies. This supports recent results stressing the importance of exploiting high-frequency intraday asset prices in the study of long-run volatility properties of asset returns.     

The scope for national monetary policy in the face of globalised financial markets

Conclusion Experience has shown that German monetary policy is far from impotent There is consequently no call for passive resignation. The monetary authorities must send clear signals if the current turbulence on the currency markets is to be kept in check. The Bundesbank itself has clearly shown — during the period following German Unification — that an autonomous monetary policy is possible in spite of the high degree of integration on international financial markets. It is hard to see why this should not be the case today simply because it is no longer interest rate hikes but base rate cuts that are called for.If interest rates are not reduced, the interest rate on the German capital market will continue to follow the lead set by American monetary policy. But is it right that the American central bank, on the basis of data on the state of the US economy, indirectly helps to determine whether new jobs are created in Germany and whether existing jobs are made more secure? What is required in the medium term is greater independence on the part of German monetary policy. The globalisation of financial markets does not stand in the way of such a strategy.