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Report
Dealer Capacity and U.S. Treasury Market Functionality
We show a significant loss in U.S. Treasury market functionality when intensive use of dealer balance sheets is needed to intermediate bond markets, as in March 2020. Although yield volatility explains most of the variation in Treasury market liquidity over time, when dealer balance sheet utilization reaches sufficiently high levels, liquidity is much worse than predicted by yield volatility alone. This is consistent with the existence of occasionally binding constraints on the intermediation capacity of bond markets.
Report
Intraday Price Pressure and Order Flow Around U.S. Treasury Auctions
Using thirty-three years of intraday Treasury data, we provide the first high-frequency evidence on auction-day price pressure: yields rise in the hours before auction and reverse afterward. This pressure strengthens when dealers face tighter risk-bearing constraints and weakens when investor demand is stronger or more elastic. More importantly, net order flow dominates in explaining the pressure, providing the first direct evidence that trading transmits dealer constraints into prices. Despite concerns about dealer capacity amid rapid federal debt growth, price pressure has not increased in ...