Perceiving central bank communications through press coverage

We present evidence suggesting that a simple measure of central bank communication tone, as perceived and interpreted by the media, correlates with the performance of financial assets and market participants’ expectations. This correlation appears even stronger than that of indices constructed using more complex models, such as a large language models like BERT. We employ a straightforward quantitative index, inspired by the well-known Baker, Bloom and Davis (2016) paper, using a “bag of words” approach and semantic orientation to measure this media-perceived tone orientation in terms of dovishness or hawkishness. Our approach, which emphasises the perception by the press media, contrasts with previous research that focused primarily on central bank minutes or speeches. Our preliminary findings reveal a statistically significant correlation with the movements of 2, 5 and 10-year US Treasury yields, with reactions being faster and more pronounced for shorter maturities. Our index also shows a leading correlation with some measures of inflation expectations, investor sentiment proxies, the stock market and the dollar. Additionally, to account for the impact of COVID-19, we propose the use of Google search trends as a proxy variable.