Search Results
Journal Article
Averting a Treasury Market Crisis
The Treasury bond market suffered a liquidity crisis at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. What reforms are needed to make sure it doesn't happen again?
Discussion Paper
Has Liquidity Risk in the Treasury and Equity Markets Increased?
Market participants have argued that market liquidity has deteriorated since the financial crisis. However, inspection of common metrics such as bid-ask spreads, market depth, and price impact do not show pronounced reductions in liquidity compared with precrisis levels. In this post, we argue that recent changes in liquidity conditions may best be described in terms of heightened liquidity risk, as opposed to general declines in liquidity levels. We propose a measure that shows liquidity risk has risen in equity and Treasury markets and discuss some factors behind the increase.
Report
Intraday market making with overnight inventory costs
The U.S. Treasury market is highly intermediated by nonbank principal trading firms (PTFs). Limited capital forces PTFs to end the trading day roughly flat. We construct a continuous time market making model to analyze the trade-off faced by a profit-maximizing firm with overnight inventory costs, and develop closed-form representations of the optimal price policy functions. Our model reveals that bid-ask spreads widen as the end of the trading day approaches, and that increases in order arrival rates do not always lead to higher price volatility. Our empirical analysis shows that ...
Discussion Paper
Market Function Purchases by the Federal Reserve
In response to disorderly market conditions in mid-March 2020, the Federal Reserve began an asset purchase program designed to improve market functioning in the Treasury and agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) markets. The 2020 purchases have no parallel, but there are several instances of large SOMA purchases undertaken to support Treasury market functions in earlier decades. This post recaps three such episodes, one in 1939 at the start of World War II, one in 1958 in connection with a poorly received Treasury financing, and a third in 1970, also in connection with a Treasury financing. ...
Discussion Paper
How Does Tick Size Affect Treasury Market Quality?
The popularity of U.S. Treasury securities as a means of pricing other securities, managing interest rate risk, and storing value is, in part, due to the efficiency and liquidity of the U.S. Treasury market. Any structural changes that might affect these attributes of the market are therefore of interest to market participants and policymakers alike. In this post, we consider how a 2018 change in the minimum price increment, or tick size, for the 2-year U.S. Treasury note affected market quality, following our recently updated New York Fed staff report.
Report
Tick Size, Competition for Liquidity Provision, and Price Discovery: Evidence from the U.S. Treasury Market
This paper studies how a tick size change affects market quality, price discovery, and the competition for liquidity provision by dealers and high-frequency trading firms (HFTs) in the U.S. Treasury market. Employing difference-in-differences regressions around the November 19, 2018 tick size reduction in the two-year Treasury note and a similar change for the two-year futures eight weeks later, we find significantly improved market quality. Moreover, dealers become more competitive in liquidity provision and price improvement, consistent with the hypothesis that HFTs find liquidity provision ...
Working Paper
Secondary Market Liquidity and the Optimal Capital Structure
We present a model where endogenous liquidity generates a feedback loop between secondary market liquidity and firms' financing decisions in primary markets. The model features two key frictions: a costly state verification problem in primary markets, and search frictions in over-the-counter secondary markets. Our concept of liquidity depends endogenously on illiquid assets put up for sale relative to the resources available for buying those assets in the secondary market. Liquidity determines the liquidity premium, which affects issuance in the primary market, and this effect feeds back into ...
Market Liquidity and the Quantity Theory of Money
A rising federal funds rate means there is less liquidity in the market, which could help reduce the inflation rate in the months ahead.
Discussion Paper
Has Treasury Market Liquidity Improved in 2024?
Standard metrics point to an improvement in Treasury market liquidity in 2024 to levels last seen before the start of the current monetary policy tightening cycle. Volatility has also trended down, consistent with the improved liquidity. While at least one market functioning metric has worsened in recent months, that measure is an indirect gauge of market liquidity and suggests a level of current functioning that is far better than at the peak seen during the global financial crisis (GFC).
Discussion Paper
Synthetic Stablecoins and Financial Stability
On October 10, 2025, the announcement of a potential additional 100 percent tariff on Chinese goods drove risk-off moves across equities, Treasuries, credit spreads, and digital assets. Digital asset prices fell sharply, trading volumes surged, and liquidity vanished from key exchanges. In this post, we show how the price shock in digital assets was transmitted and amplified through a class of instruments called synthetic stablecoins—crypto assets whose structural design turned an external shock into a self-reinforcing deleveraging spiral within the crypto ecosystem.