Why Did the Recent Oil Price Declines Affect Bond Prices of Non‑Energy Companies?
Oil prices plunged 65 percent between July 2014 and December of the following year. During this period, the yield spread—the yield of a corporate bond minus the yield of a Treasury bond of the same maturity—of energy companies shot up, indicating increased credit risk. Surprisingly, the yield spread of non‑energy firms also rose even though many non‑energy firms might be expected to benefit from lower energy‑related costs. In this blog post, we examine this counterintuitive result. We find evidence of a liquidity spillover, whereby the bonds of more liquid non‑energy firms had to be sold to satisfy investors who withdrew from bond funds in response to falling energy prices.
Could Liquidity Regulation Revive the Bank Lending Channel?
Dong Beom Choi and Ulysses Velasquez How does monetary policy affect spending in the economy? The economic literature suggests two main channels of monetary transmission: the money or interest rate channel and the bank lending channel. The first view focuses on changes in real interest rates resulting from a shift in monetary policy and corresponding […]
Quantifying Potential Spillovers from Runs on High‑Yield Funds
On December 9, 2015, Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund (FCF) announced a “Plan of Liquidation,” effectively halting investor redemptions.
Are Asset Managers Vulnerable to Fire Sales?
The Workup, Technology, and Price Discovery in the Interdealer Market for U.S. Treasury Securities
Primary Dealer Participation in the Secondary U.S. Treasury Market
Michael J. Fleming, Frank M. Keane, and Ernst Schaumburg The recent Joint Staff Report on October 15, 2014, exploring an episode of unprecedented volatility in the U.S. Treasury market, revealed that primary dealers no longer account for most trading volume on the interdealer brokerage (IDB) platforms. This shift is noteworthy because dealers contribute to long-term […]
Is Treasury Market Liquidity Becoming More Concentrated?
Michael Fleming In an earlier post, we showed that Treasury market liquidity appears reasonably good by historical standards. That analysis focused on the most liquid benchmark securities, largely because data availability is best for those securities. However, some studies, such as this one and this one, report that market liquidity is concentrating in the most […]
Further Analysis of Corporate Bond Market Liquidity
Tobias Adrian, Michael Fleming, Erik Vogt, and Zachary Wojtowicz Our earlier analyses from last October and earlier in this series looked at market liquidity measures averaged across all corporate bonds or broad sub-groups of corporate bonds. Commentators have pointed out that such broad averages might mask important differences among narrower sub-groups of bonds and that […]
Corporate Bond Market Liquidity Redux: More Price‑Based Evidence
Has MBS Market Liquidity Deteriorated?
Rich Podjasek, Linsey Molloy, Michael J. Fleming, and Andreas Fuster Mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by the government-backed entities Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae, or so-called “agency MBS,” are the primary funding source for U.S. residential housing. A significant deterioration in the liquidity of the MBS market could lead investors to demand a premium for […]