301 posts on "Financial Markets"
October 19, 2020
How Has Post‑Crisis Banking Regulation Affected Hedge Funds and Prime Brokers?
“Arbitrageurs” such as hedge funds play a key role in the efficiency of financial markets. They compare closely related assets, then buy the relatively cheap one and sell the relatively expensive one, thereby driving the prices of the assets closer together. For executing trades and other services, hedge funds rely on prime brokers and broker-dealers. In a previous Liberty Street Economics blog post, we argued that post-crisis changes to regulation and market structure have increased the costs of arbitrage activity, potentially contributing to the persistent deviations in the prices of closely related assets since the 2007–09 financial crisis. In this post, we document how post-crisis changes to bank regulations have affected the relationship between hedge funds and broker-dealers.
Posted at 7:00 am in Bank Capital, Banks, Central Bank, Corporate Finance, Financial Institutions, Financial Markets, Regulation | Permalink
October 1, 2020
The Impact of the Corporate Credit Facilities
American companies have raised almost $1 trillion in the U.S. corporate bond market since March. Based on Compustat data, these companies employ more than 16 million people, and have spent more than $280 billion on capital expenditures in the first half of 2020, thereby supporting future economic activity. In this post, we document the contribution of the Primary Market and Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facilities (PMCCF and SMCCF) to bond market functioning, summarizing a detailed evaluation described in a new working paper. Improvements documented in an earlier blog post on the corporate facilities continued after the initial announcement as purchases began, and can be attributed both to the positive effects of Federal Reserve interventions generally as well as the facilities’ direct impact on eligible issuers in particular.
August 26, 2020
How Does the Liquidity of New Treasury Securities Evolve?
In a recent Liberty Street Economics post, we showed that the newly reintroduced 20-year bond trades less than other on-the-run Treasury securities and has similar liquidity to that of the more interest‑rate‑sensitive 30-year bond. Is it common for newly introduced securities to trade less and with higher transaction costs, and how does security trading behavior change over time? In this post, we look back at how liquidity evolved for earlier reintroductions of Treasury securities so as to gain insight into how liquidity might evolve for the new 20-year bond.
August 20, 2020
Market Function Purchases by the Federal Reserve
This post describes efforts taken by the Federal Reserve to support and sustain the Treasury and MBS markets following the COVID-19 outbreak as well as prior “market functioning” interventions in 1939, 1958, and 1970.
August 3, 2020
The Federal Reserve’s Large‑Scale Repo Program
The repo market faced extraordinary liquidity strains in March amid broader financial market volatility related to the coronavirus pandemic and uncertainty regarding the path of policy. The strains were particularly severe in the term repo market, in which borrowing and lending arrangements are for longer than one business day. In this post, we discuss the causes of the liquidity disruptions that arose in the repo market as well as the Federal Reserve’s actions to address those disruptions.
July 17, 2020
MBS Market Dysfunctions in the Time of COVID‑19
Haoyang Liu, Asani Sarkar, and coauthors study a particular aspect of MBS market disruptions by showing how a long-standing relationship between cash and forward markets broke down, in spite of dealers increasing the provision of liquidity. The analysis also highlights an innovative response by the Federal Reserve that seemed to have helped to normalize market functioning.
Posted at 7:00 am in Financial Institutions, Financial Markets, Liquidity, Pandemic | Permalink | Comments (2)
July 16, 2020
Federal Reserve Agency CMBS Purchases
On March 23, the Open Market Trading Desk (the Desk) at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York initiated plans to purchase agency commercial mortgage-backed securities (agency CMBS) at the direction of the FOMC in order to support smooth market functioning of the markets for these securities. This post describes the deterioration in market conditions that led to agency CMBS purchases, how the Desk conducts these operations, and how market functioning has improved since the start of the purchase operations.
July 1, 2020
How Liquid Is the New 20‑Year Treasury Bond?
Fleming and Ruela take a first look at the U.S. government’s new 20-year bond, using a short sample of available data to describe its trading activity and liquidity.
June 25, 2020
Insider Networks
Erol and Lee consider the cat-and-mouse game played between financial regulators and those attempting to trade on inside information, including how insiders might form networks in order to circumvent restrictions, and how regulators might cope with insiders’ tactics.
Posted at 7:00 am in Bank Capital, Banks, Central Bank, Financial Institutions, Financial Intermediation, Financial Markets, Regulation | Permalink
May 29, 2020
Treasury Market Liquidity and the Federal Reserve during the COVID‑19 Pandemic
This analysis zeroes in on the Treasury market in early 2020 to better understand how the Fed’s actions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic evolved in relation to day-to-day market developments.
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