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Showing results 1 to 7 of approximately 7.
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Speech
Remarks before the Market Risk Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading
Remarks by Sam Schulhofer-Wohl, Market Risk Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading in Washington, D.C.
Speech
Treasury Market Liquidity and Early Lessons from the Pandemic Shock
Remarks at Brookings-Chicago Booth Task Force on Financial Stability (TFFS) meeting, panel on market liquidity (delivered via videoconference).
Discussion Paper
Treasury Market Liquidity and the Federal Reserve during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Many of the actions taken by the Federal Reserve during the COVID-19 pandemic are intended to address a deterioration of market functioning. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced purchases of Treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS), in particular, “to support the smooth functioning of markets” in those securities. Last month, we showed in this post how one metric of functioning for the Treasury market, market illiquidity, jumped to unusually high levels in March amid massive uncertainty about the economic effects of the pandemic. In this post, we ...
Journal Article
The G-Spread Suggests Federal Reserve Restored Calm to Treasury Markets
In March, the coronavirus pandemic led to a sell-off in Treasury markets and a subsequent period of financial stress. I use one measure of Treasury market pressure, the G-spread, to gauge how liquidity in Treasury markets changed in response to the pandemic and the Federal Reserve’s interventions. I find that timely Federal Reserve interventions restored calm to the Treasury market, and that these interventions stand out in speed and scale compared with interventions in the early days of the 2007–08 financial crisis.
Discussion Paper
The Treasury Market Practices Group: A Consequential First Decade
The Treasury Market Practices Group (TMPG) was formed in February 2007 in response to the appearance of some questionable trading practices in the secondary market for U.S. Treasury securities. (A history of the origins of the TMPG is available here.) Left unaddressed, the practices threatened to harm the efficiency and integrity of an essential global benchmark market. The Group responded by identifying and publicizing “best practices” in trading Treasury securities—a statement of behavioral norms intended to maintain a level and competitive playing field for all market participants. ...
Working Paper
Price Discovery in the U.S. Treasury Cash Market: On Principal Trading Firms and Dealers
We explore the following question: does the trading activity of registered dealers on Treasury interdealer broker (IDB) platforms differ from that of principal trading firms (PTFs), and if so, how and to what effect on market liquidity? To do so, we use a novel dataset that combines Treasury cash transaction reports from FINRA’s Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE) and publicly available limit order book data from BrokerTec. We find that trades conducted in a limit order book setting have high permanent price impact when a PTF is the passive party, playing the role of ...
Working Paper
Hedge Fund Treasury Trading and Funding Fragility: Evidence from the COVID-19 Crisis
Hedge fund gross U.S. Treasury (UST) exposures doubled from 2018 to February 2020 to $2.4 trillion, primarily driven by relative value arbitrage trading and supported by corresponding increases in repo borrowing. In March 2020, amid unprecedented UST market turmoil, the average UST trading hedge fund had a return of -7% and reduced its UST exposure by close to 20%, despite relatively unchanged bilateral repo volumes and haircuts. Analyzing hedge fund-creditor borrowing data, we find the large, more regulated dealers provided disproportionately more funding during the crisis than other ...