Search Results
Working Paper
Price Pressure and Price Discovery in the Term Structure of Interest Rates
We study the price pressure and price discovery effects in the U.S. Treasury market by using a term structure model. Our model decomposes yield curve shifts into two components: a virtually permanent change related to order flow and a transitory, price pressure effect due to dealer inventories. We find strong evidence that net dealer Treasury inventories has impact on the yield curve. Cash Treasury instruments in inventory have a larger impact on yields than futures contracts, suggesting that cash and futures inventories are not perfect substitutes. Price discovery in the level of interest ...
Working Paper
Arbitrage and Liquidity: Evidence from a Panel of Exchange Traded Funds
Market liquidity is expected to facilitate arbitrage, which in turn should affect the liquidity of the assets traded by arbitrageurs. We study this relationship using a unique dataset of equity and bond ETFs compiled from big trade-level data. We find that liquidity is an important determinant of the efficacy of the ETF arbitrage. For less liquid bond ETFs, Granger-causality tests and impulse responses suggest that this relationship is stronger and more persistent, and liquidity spillovers are observed from portfolio constituents to ETF shares. Our results inform the design of synthetic ...
Working Paper
Microstructure Invariance in U.S. Stock Market Trades
This paper studies invariance relationships in tick-by-tick transaction data in the U.S. stock market. Over the 1993?2001 period, the estimated monthly regression coefficients of the log of trade arrival rate on the log of trading activity have an almost constant value of 0.666, strikingly close to the value of 2/3 predicted by the invariance hypothesis. Over the 2001?14 period, the estimated coefficients rise, and their average value is equal to 0.79, suggesting that the reduction in tick size in 2001 and the subsequent increase in algorithmic trading resulted in a more intense order ...
Working Paper
Trader Positions and Marketwide Liquidity Demand
In electronic, liquid markets, traders frequently change their positions. The distribution of these trader position changes carries important information about liquidity demand in the market. From this distribution of trader position-changes, we construct a marketwide measure for intraday liquidity demand that does not necessarily depend on aggressive trading. Using a rich regulatory dataset on S&P 500 E-mini futures and 10-year Treasury futures markets, we show that this liquidity demand measure has a positive impact on prices. We then decompose our measure of liquidity demand into three ...
Discussion Paper
New Insights from N-CEN: Liquidity Management at Open-End Funds and Primary Market Concentration of ETFs
Structural vulnerabilities associated with open-end funds have received increasing attention among academics and regulators over the past few years. Despite the effort by policymakers to enhance the liquidity risk management practices at these funds, evaluating the availability, use and effectiveness of liquidity management tools continues to be a challenging task in assessing vulnerabilities in open-end funds, largely because comprehensive data on open-end funds' access to liquidity management tools remain scarce.
Working Paper
Are leveraged and inverse ETFs the new portfolio insurers?
This paper studies Leveraged and Inverse Exchange Traded Funds (LETFs) from a financial stability perspective. Mechanical positive-feedback rebalancing of LETFs resembles the portfolio insurance strategies, which contributed to the stock market crash of October 19, 1987 (Brady Report, 1988). I show that a 1% increase in broad stock-market indexes induces LETFs to originate rebalancing flows equivalent to $1.04 billion worth of stock. Price-insensitive and concentrated trading of LETFs results in price reaction and extra volatility in underlying stocks. Implied price impact calculations and ...
Discussion Paper
Synthetic ETFs
Exchange traded funds (ETFs) achieve their investment objectives by either owning a portfolio of securities (physical ETFs) or entering into swap agreements that deliver the returns of pre-specified indexes (synthetic ETFs). In this note, we provide an overview of how synthetic ETFs work and analyze collateralization levels for a group of synthetic ETFs that voluntarily report their collateral baskets.