IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/usg/sfwpfi/201828.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Informed Corporate Credit Market Before Monetary Policy Surprises: Explaining Pre-FOMC Stock Market Movements

Author

Listed:
  • Farshid Abdi
  • Botao Wu

Abstract

We show that U.S. corporate bond market movements during the days preceding FOMC announcements can predict monetary policy surprises, as well as the pre-FOMC stock market movements. Starting several days before an expansionary (contractionary) surprise in FOMC decisions, corporate bond prices surge (decline) and yield spreads decline (surge). The pattern is statistically and economically significant. Moreover, corporate bond customers buy (sell) more often from dealers before expansionary (contractionary) surprises, suggesting that in aggregate they have more accurate information about the outcome of FOMC announcements. A portfolio that mimics customer trades is profitable with a Sharpe ratio of 0.64 and is profitable before both contractionary and expansionary surprises. Furthermore, consistent with the informativeness of corporate bond transactions, we show that lagged corporate bond customer-dealer trade imbalances can predict pre-FOMC stock market movements and explain pre-FOMC drift. Corporate bond yield changes "Granger-cause" stock pre-FOMC movements, and a 1% surge in the constructed TRACE bond yield during a 2 p.m.-to-2 p.m. period ending one day before an FOMC announcement, predicts a 5.8% decline in the S&P 500 index for the 2 p.m.-to-2 p.m. period ending on the FOMC meeting day. This bond-to-stock granger causality does not exist for non-pre-FOMC periods and is stronger for the companies with higher probability of default.

Suggested Citation

  • Farshid Abdi & Botao Wu, 2018. "Informed Corporate Credit Market Before Monetary Policy Surprises: Explaining Pre-FOMC Stock Market Movements," Working Papers on Finance 1828, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.
    • Handle: RePEc:usg:sfwpfi:2018:28
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/sfwpfi/WPF-1828.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ben S. Bernanke & Kenneth N. Kuttner, 2005. "What Explains the Stock Market's Reaction to Federal Reserve Policy?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(3), pages 1221-1257, June.
    2. John Y. Campbell & Jens Hilscher & Jan Szilagyi, 2008. "In Search of Distress Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2899-2939, December.
    3. Kingsley Y. L. Fong & Craig W. Holden & Charles A. Trzcinka, 2017. "What Are the Best Liquidity Proxies for Global Research?," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 21(4), pages 1355-1401.
    4. Kuttner, Kenneth N., 2001. "Monetary policy surprises and interest rates: Evidence from the Fed funds futures market," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 523-544, June.
    5. Brownlees, C.T. & Gallo, G.M., 2006. "Financial econometric analysis at ultra-high frequency: Data handling concerns," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 51(4), pages 2232-2245, December.
    6. Thomas Philippon, 2009. "The Bond Market's q," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(3), pages 1011-1056.
    7. Andreas Neuhierl & Michael Weber & Michael Weber, 2017. "Monetary Momentum," CESifo Working Paper Series 6648, CESifo.
    8. Gilchrist, Simon & Yankov, Vladimir & Zakrajsek, Egon, 2009. "Credit market shocks and economic fluctuations: Evidence from corporate bond and stock markets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 471-493, May.
    9. Craig W. Holden & Stacey Jacobsen, 2014. "Liquidity Measurement Problems in Fast, Competitive Markets: Expensive and Cheap Solutions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(4), pages 1747-1785, August.
    10. Kwan, Simon H., 1996. "Firm-specific information and the correlation between individual stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 63-80, January.
    11. John C. Driscoll & Aart C. Kraay, 1998. "Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimation With Spatially Dependent Panel Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(4), pages 549-560, November.
    12. David O. Lucca & Emanuel Moench, 2015. "The Pre-FOMC Announcement Drift," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(1), pages 329-371, February.
    13. Merton, Robert C, 1974. "On the Pricing of Corporate Debt: The Risk Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(2), pages 449-470, May.
    14. Simon Gilchrist & David López-Salido & Egon Zakrajšek, 2015. "Monetary Policy and Real Borrowing Costs at the Zero Lower Bound," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 77-109, January.
    15. João F Gomes & Marco Grotteria & Jessica A Wachter, 2019. "Cyclical Dispersion in Expected Defaults," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(4), pages 1275-1308.
    16. Hendershott, Terrence & Livdan, Dmitry & Schürhoff, Norman, 2015. "Are institutions informed about news?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 249-287.
    17. Torben G. Andersen & Tim Bollerslev & Francis X. Diebold & Clara Vega, 2003. "Micro Effects of Macro Announcements: Real-Time Price Discovery in Foreign Exchange," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 38-62, March.
    18. Adrian, Tobias & Capponi, Agostino & Fleming, Michael & Vogt, Erik & Zhang, Hongzhong, 2020. "Intraday market making with overnight inventory costs," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    19. Lesmond, David A & Ogden, Joseph P & Trzcinka, Charles A, 1999. "A New Estimate of Transaction Costs," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(5), pages 1113-1141.
    20. Asparouhova, Elena & Bessembinder, Hendrik & Kalcheva, Ivalina, 2010. "Liquidity biases in asset pricing tests," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 215-237, May.
    21. Itzhak Ben‐David & Francesco Franzoni & Rabih Moussawi, 2018. "Do ETFs Increase Volatility?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(6), pages 2471-2535, December.
    22. Edith S. Hotchkiss & Tavy Ronen, 2002. "The Informational Efficiency of the Corporate Bond Market: An Intraday Analysis," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(5), pages 1325-1354.
    23. Simon Gilchrist & Egon Zakrajsek, 2012. "Credit Spreads and Business Cycle Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1692-1720, June.
    24. Easley, David & O’Hara, Maureen & Yang, Liyan, 2016. "Differential Access to Price Information in Financial Markets," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 51(4), pages 1071-1110, August.
    25. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    26. Jordan Brooks & Michael Katz & Hanno Lustig, 2018. "Post-FOMC Announcement Drift in U.S. Bond Markets," NBER Working Papers 25127, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    27. Kyle, Albert S, 1985. "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1315-1335, November.
    28. Pierre Collin-Dufresne & Vyacheslav Fos, 2013. "Do Prices Reveal the Presence of Informed Trading?," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 13-69, Swiss Finance Institute, revised Sep 2015.
    29. repec:oup:rfinst:v:21:y:2017:i:4:p:1355-1401. is not listed on IDEAS
    30. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    31. Sreedhar T. Bharath & Tyler Shumway, 2008. "Forecasting Default with the Merton Distance to Default Model," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(3), pages 1339-1369, May.
    32. Farshid Abdi & Angelo Ranaldo, 2017. "A Simple Estimation of Bid-Ask Spreads from Daily Close, High, and Low Prices," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(12), pages 4437-4480.
    33. McInish, Thomas H. & Wood, Robert A., 1990. "An analysis of transactions data for the Toronto Stock Exchange : Return patterns and end-of-the-day effect," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(2-3), pages 441-458, August.
    34. Bernile, Gennaro & Hu, Jianfeng & Tang, Yuehua, 2016. "Can information be locked up? Informed trading ahead of macro-news announcements," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(3), pages 496-520.
    35. Elena Asparouhova & Hendrik Bessembinder & Ivalina Kalcheva, 2013. "Noisy Prices and Inference Regarding Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(2), pages 665-714, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Seung Kwak, 2022. "How Does Monetary Policy Affect Prices of Corporate Loans?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2022-008, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Czech, Robert & Pintér, Gábor, 2020. "Informed trading and the dynamics of client-dealer connections in corporate bond markets," Bank of England working papers 895, Bank of England, revised 20 Jan 2022.
    3. Chao Ying, 2020. "The Pre-FOMC Announcement Drift and Private Information: Kyle Meets Macro-Finance," 2020 Papers pyi149, Job Market Papers.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cao, N. & Galvani, V. & Gubellini, S., 2017. "Firm-specific stock and bond predictability: New evidence from Canada," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 174-192.
    2. Tim Bollerslev & Jia Li & Yuan Xue, 2018. "Volume, Volatility, and Public News Announcements," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(4), pages 2005-2041.
    3. Mohammad Jahan-Parvar & Filip Zikes, 2019. "When do low-frequency measures really measure transaction costs?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2019-051, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Yang-Ho Park, 2019. "Information in Yield Spread Trades," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2019-025, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Gregory Bauer & Clara Vega, 2004. "The Monetary Origins of Asymmetric Information in International Equity Markets," Staff Working Papers 04-47, Bank of Canada.
    6. Caldara, Dario & Fuentes-Albero, Cristina & Gilchrist, Simon & Zakrajšek, Egon, 2016. "The macroeconomic impact of financial and uncertainty shocks," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 185-207.
    7. Andreou, Christoforos K. & Andreou, Panayiotis C. & Lambertides, Neophytos, 2021. "Financial distress risk and stock price crashes," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    8. Kalimipalli, Madhu & Nayak, Subhankar & Perez, M. Fabricio, 2013. "Dynamic effects of idiosyncratic volatility and liquidity on corporate bond spreads," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 2969-2990.
    9. João F Gomes & Marco Grotteria & Jessica A Wachter, 2019. "Cyclical Dispersion in Expected Defaults," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(4), pages 1275-1308.
    10. Philippe Mueller & Alireza Tahbaz-Salehi & Andrea Vedolin, 2017. "Exchange Rates and Monetary Policy Uncertainty," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(3), pages 1213-1252, June.
    11. Zeynep Cobandag Guloglu & Cumhur Ekinci, 2022. "Liquidity measurement: A comparative review of the literature with a focus on high frequency," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(1), pages 41-74, February.
    12. Kerssenfischer, Mark & Schmeling, Maik, 2022. "What moves markets?," Discussion Papers 16/2022, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    13. Siamak Javadi & Ali Nejadmalayeri & Timothy L Krehbiel, 2018. "Do FOMC Actions Speak Loudly? Evidence from Corporate Bond Credit Spreads [Communication and monetary policy]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(5), pages 1877-1909.
    14. Segev, Nimrod, 2020. "Identifying the risk-Taking channel of monetary transmission and the connection to economic activity," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    15. Gómez-Cram, Roberto & Grotteria, Marco, 2022. "Real-time price discovery via verbal communication: Method and application to Fedspeak," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(3), pages 993-1025.
    16. Seung Kwak, 2022. "How Does Monetary Policy Affect Prices of Corporate Loans?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2022-008, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    17. Ozdagli, Ali & Velikov, Mihail, 2020. "Show me the money: The monetary policy risk premium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(2), pages 320-339.
    18. Nina Karnaukh & Angelo Ranaldo & Paul Söderlind, 2015. "Understanding FX Liquidity," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(11), pages 3073-3108.
    19. Farshid Abdi, 2018. "Cycles of Declines and Reversals Following Overnight Market Declines," Working Papers on Finance 1829, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.
    20. Cenesizoglu, Tolga & Grass, Gunnar, 2018. "Bid- and ask-side liquidity in the NYSE limit order book," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 14-38.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Pre-FOMC Announcement Drift; Corporate Bond; Credit Risk; Enhanced TRACE; TAQ;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:usg:sfwpfi:2018:28. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cfisgch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.