Intraday effect of news on emerging European forex markets: An event study analysis

We analyze the impact of euro zone/German and U.S. macroeconomic news announcements and the communication of the monetary policy settings of the ECB and the Fed on the forex markets of new EU members. We employ an event study methodology to analyze intraday data from 2011–2015. Our comprehensive analysis of the wide variety of macroeconomic information during the post-GFC period shows that: (i) macroeconomic announcements affect the value of the new EU country exchange rates, (ii) the origin of the announcement matters, (iii) the type of announcement matters, (iv) different types of news (good, bad or neutral) result in different reactions, (v) markets react not only after the news release but also before, (vi) when the U.S. dollar is the base currency the impact of the news is larger than in the case of the euro, (vii) announcements on ECB monetary policy result in stronger effects than those of the Fed, (viii) temporary inefficiencies are present in new EU country forex markets, (ix) new EU country exchange rates react differently to positive US news during the EU debt crisis compared to the rest of the period.     

Time-varying synchronization of European stock markets

We study intraday comovements among three developed (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) and three emerging (the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland) European stock markets. When applying a Dynamic Conditional Correlation GARCH model to 5- min tick intraday stock price data (2003–2006), we find a strong correlation between the German and French markets and also between these two markets and the UK stock market. However, very little systematic positive correlation during a trading day can be detected between the developed and emerging stock markets, or within the emerging group itself. Hungary exhibits higher correlation with the developing markets and the emerging markets and its dynamics show an increasing trend; Poland and the Czech Republic produce less clear-cut results.     

ECB monetary policy and commodity prices

We assess the impact of ECB monetary policy on global aggregate and sectoral commodity prices over 2001–2019. We employ an SVAR model and separately assess periods before and after the global financial crisis. Our key results indicate that contractionary monetary policy shocks have positive effects on commodity prices during both conventional and unconventional monetary policy periods, indicating the effectiveness of unconventional monetary policy tools. The largest impact is documented on energy (fuel) and food commodities. Our results also suggest that the effect of ECB monetary policy on commodity prices transmits through the exchange rate channel, which influences European market demand.