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on Market Microstructure |
| By: | Paolo Pasquariello; Clara Vega |
| Abstract: | We study the role played by private and public information in the process of price formation in the U.S. Treasury bond market. To guide our analysis, we develop a parsimonious model of speculative trading in the presence of two realistic market frictions -- information heterogeneity and imperfect competition among informed traders -- and a public signal. We test its equilibrium implications by analyzing the response of two-year, five-year, and ten-year U.S. bond yields to order flow and real-time U.S. macroeconomic news. We find strong evidence of informational effects in the U.S. Treasury bond market: unanticipated order flow has a significant and permanent impact on daily bond yield changes during both announcement and non-announcement days. Our analysis further shows that, consistent with our stylized model, the contemporaneous correlation between order flow and yield changes is higher when the dispersion of beliefs among market participants is high and public announcements are noisy. |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgif:874&r=mst |
| By: | Sigridur Benediktsdottir |
| Abstract: | I establish stylized empirical facts about the trading behavior of New York Stock Exchange specialists. Specifically, I look at the effect of future price movements, the specialist's explicit role, and the specialist's inventory levels on specialist trading behavior. The motivation for this empirical study is to infer whether the specialist behaves like an active investor who has an information advantage which he obtains while acting as a broker for other traders. If this were the case, one would expect that the specialist would engage in a profit maximizing strategy, buying low and selling high, which is opposite to the prediction of the traditional inventory model. I find that specialists behave like active investors who seek to buy stocks when prices are low and to sell when prices are high. I also find that when specialists are not performing their trading obligations of being on the opposite side of the market they are in almost 85 percent of their trades, buying low and selling high. The findings of this paper indicate that the NYSE specialist is best represented in theoretical models as a constrained profit maximizing, informed investor rather than as a zero profit trader. |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgif:876&r=mst |
| By: | Torben G. Andersen; Luca Benzoni |
| Abstract: | We investigate whether bonds span the volatility risk in the U.S. Treasury market, as predicted by most 'affine' term structure models. To this end, we construct powerful and model-free empirical measures of the quadratic yield variation for a cross-section of fixed- maturity zero-coupon bonds ('realized yield volatility') through the use of high-frequency data. We find that the yield curve fails to span yield volatility, as the systematic volatility factors are largely unrelated to the cross- section of yields. We conclude that a broad class of affine diffusive, Gaussian-quadratic and affine jump-diffusive models is incapable of accommodating the observed yield volatility dynamics. An important implication is that the bond markets per se are incomplete and yield volatility risk cannot be hedged by taking positions solely in the Treasury bond market. We also advocate using the empirical realized yield volatility measures more broadly as a basis for specification testing and (parametric) model selection within the term structure literature. |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-06-15&r=mst |
| By: | Gregory H. Bauer; Clara Vega |
| Abstract: | Existing studies using low-frequency data have found that macroeconomic shocks contribute little to international stock market covariation. However, these papers have not accounted for the presence of asymmetric information where sophisticated investors generate private information about the fundamentals that drive returns in many countries. In this paper, we use a new microstructure data set to better identify the effects of private and public information shocks about U.S. interest rates and equity returns. High-frequency private and public information shocks help forecast domestic money and equity returns over daily and weekly intervals. In addition, these shocks are components of factors that are priced in a model of the cross section of international returns. Linking private information to U.S. macroeconomic factors is useful for many domestic and international asset pricing tests. |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgif:872&r=mst |