Search Results
Working Paper
The high-frequency effects of U.S. macroeconomic data releases on prices and trading activity in the global interdealer foreign exchange market
We introduce a new high-frequency foreign exchange dataset from EBS (Electronic Broking Service) that includes trading volume in the global interdealer spot market, data not previously available to researchers. The data also gives live transactable quotes, rather than the indicative quotes that have been used in most previous high frequency foreign exchange analysis. We describe intraday volume and volatility patterns in euro-dollar and dollar-yen trading. We study the effects of scheduled U.S. macroeconomic data releases, first confirming the finding of recent literature that the conditional ...
Report
All-to-All Trading in the U.S. Treasury Market
While the U.S. Treasury market remains the deepest and most liquid securities market in the world, several episodes of abrupt deterioration in market functioning over recent years have brought the market’s resilience into focus. The adoption of all-to-all trading in the Treasury market could be one avenue to strengthen market resilience. Conceptually, all-to-all trading would allow any market participant to trade directly with any other market participant. This could be particularly helpful in times of stress, when the capacity of traditional intermediaries may be tested. In this paper, we ...
Discussion Paper
2nd Annual International Roles of the U.S. Dollar Conference
The U.S. dollar plays a central role in the global economy. In addition to being the most widely used currency in foreign exchange transactions, it represents the largest share in official reserves, international debt securities and loans, cross-border payments, and trade invoicing.
Working Paper
Rise of the machines: algorithmic trading in the foreign exchange market
We study the impact that algorithmic trading, computers directly interfacing at high frequency with trading platforms, has had on price discovery and volatility in the foreign exchange market. Our dataset represents a majority of global interdealer trading in three major currency pairs in 2006 and 2007. Importantly, it contains precise observations of the size and the direction of the computer-generated and human-generated trades each minute. The empirical analysis provides several important insights. First, we find evidence that algorithmic trades tend to be correlated, suggesting that the ...
Working Paper
What drives volatility persistence in the foreign exchange market?
We analyze the factors driving the widely-noted persistence in asset return volatility using a unique dataset on global euro-dollar exchange rate trading. We propose a new simple empirical specification of volatility, based on the Kyle-model, which links volatility to the information flow, measured as the order flow in the market, and the price sensitivity to that information. Through the use of high-frequency data, we are able to estimate the time-varying market sensitivity to information, and movements in volatility can therefore be directly related to movements in two observable variables, ...
Working Paper
What can the data tell us about carry trades in Japanese yen?
This paper examines the available data that may shed light on the carry trade in Japanese yen. We define an individual or a sector to be engaged in the carry trade if it has a short position in yen and a long position in other currencies. The tendency of large yen movements to be skewed toward appreciations is consistent with the existence of substantial carry positions, and other evidence from market prices provides some modest support for an effect from the carry trade. Data on bank loans and bond holdings by currency reveal a large apparent yen carry position of the Japanese official ...
Journal Article
The Global Dash for Cash: Why Sovereign Bond Market Functioning Varied across Jurisdictions in March 2020
In March 2020, the economic disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a global dash for cash by investors. This selling pressure occurred across advanced-economy sovereign bond markets and caused a deterioration in market functioning, leading to central bank interventions. The authors show that these market disruptions occurred disproportionately in the U.S. Treasury market and were due to investors’ selling pressures being far more pronounced and broad-based. Furthermore, the authors assess differences in key drivers of the market disruptions across sovereign bond markets, ...
Working Paper
Uncovered interest parity: it works, but not for long
The failure of uncovered interest parity can be ascribed to the existence of a risk premium. The size of this risk premium may shrink to zero over sufficiently small intervals of time. In contrast, because no interest is paid on intradaily positions and interest is instead paid discretely at the point when a position is rolled over from one day to the next, the size of the interest differential remains fixed over any interval that covers the time of the discrete interest payment. This is true no matter how short that interval is. Using a large dataset of high frequency exchange rate data, we ...
Working Paper
Frequency of observation and the estimation of integrated volatility in deep and liquid financial markets
Using two newly available ultrahigh-frequency datasets, we investigate empirically how frequently one can sample certain foreign exchange and U.S. Treasury security returns without contaminating estimates of their integrated volatility with market microstructure noise. Using volatility signature plots and a recently-proposed formal decision rule to select the sampling frequency, we find that one can sample FX returns as frequently as once every 15 to 20 seconds without contaminating volatility estimates; bond returns may be sampled as frequently as once every 2 to 3 minutes on days without ...
Discussion Paper
Towards Increasing Complexity: The Evolution of the FX Market
The foreign exchange market has evolved extensively over time, undergoing important shifts in the types of market participants and the mix of instruments traded, within a trading ecosystem that has become increasingly complex. In this post, we discuss fundamental changes in this market over the past twenty-five years and highlight some of the implications for its future evolution. Our analysis suggests that maintaining a healthy price discovery process and fostering a level playing field among participants are areas to watch for challenges. The consequences of the evolution of the FX ...