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This article investigates spillovers from foreign economies to the U.S. through changes in long-term Treasury yields. We document a decline in the contribution of U.S. domestic news to the variance of long-term Treasury yields and an increased importance of overnight yield changes, a proxy for foreign shocks' contribution to U.S. yields. A model that identifies U.S., Euro area, and U.K. shocks that move global yields suggests that foreign shocks account for at least 20% of the daily variation in long-term U.S. yields in recent years. We also document the predictability of long-term U.S. yields by the U.S.–foreign yield spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amadeus et al. (2022) observe that aggregated, consensus (top-down) central bank monetary tones in media contain predictive information pertaining to future weekly yield fluctuations. This article elucidates the more granular, stratified (bottom-up) dynamics underlying these relations. The predictive relationships between Fed consensus tones and yields are primarily driven by an underreaction of yields to the Fed Board of Governors' tones between monetary policy meetings. Over short-term horizons, Treasury yields appear to price voting FOMC members' (Board of Governors' and Regional Bank Presidents') tones while relatively longer-term horizon yields appear to reflect both voting and non-voting tones. Fed Regional Bank Presidents' monetary tones are more responsive to regional inflation fluctuations than to unemployment. The analysis of the heterogeneous impacts of Fed members' tones over distinct yield horizons provides insights pertaining to the pricing of voting and non-voting Fed members' tones in Treasury markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of the article is to examine whether inflation-indexed treasury bonds issued by the Polish Minister of Finance protect investors’ capital against the negative consequences of an increase in the price level. Design/methodology/approach: The condition which has to be met in order to achieve a positive net rate of return in real terms has been established. The historical and current rates of return on investment in the inflation-indexed treasury bonds issued by the Polish Minister of Finance were analysed to check whether they meet this condition. Findings: Own research has shown that in general, operation principle of bonds indexed to inflation should allow the investor to gain protection from negative effects of price changes. Yet, the example of Polish treasury bonds shows that systematic reduction of interest premiums for the subsequent series of issued instruments, changes in the operation principles, negative effect of taxation and materialisation of the defined in article time-shift mismatch risk – in the high-inflation environment results in significantly negative values of the current net rates of return in real terms of the latest series of COI and EDO bonds. This means that these bonds have not protected investors from the negative effects of price increases and loss of purchase power of invested capital. Research limitations/implications: The levels of real rates of return calculated in the way presented in the article, i.e. based on official data of the Statistics Poland, are representative for the entire economy, yet do not have to translate into the same value for the individuals – real rates of return calculated appropriately for the individual investor may vary in both ways and therefore be more or less favourable than presented in the article. Originality/value: The demand for these investment products is increasing, which is surprising in the light of the article’s findings. That may, result from investors’ expectations regarding a decrease in inflation in the coming periods, as well as the fact that, despite the negative profitability in real terms, these instruments can more effectively minimize the real-term losses stemming from inflation than other types of investments of a similar risk level (deposits, savings accounts) what can be furtherly reviewed in the next research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We identify flight-to-safety (FTS) days for twenty-three countries using only stock and bond returns and a model averaging approach. FTS days comprise less than 2% of the sample and are associated with a 2.7% average bond-equity return differential and significant flows out of equity funds and into government bond and money market funds. FTS represents flights to both quality and liquidity in international equity markets, but mainly a flight to quality in the U.S. corporate bond market. Emerging markets, endowment funds, and hedge funds perform poorly during FTS, whereas hedge funds appear to vary their systematic exposures prior to an FTS. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crypto-currency is distinct featured digital asset designed to work as decentralized asset, yet it has raised many questions and doubts about its definition and regulations. Keeping in view the increasing interest of masses in crypto-currencies the research is extended to examine the role of crypto-currency in diversification of investment. Bivariate analysis of crypto-currency market and other asset classes like gold, exchange rate, stock returns and government bonds has been observed among countries where cryptocurrencies are being traded most frequently over 2013 to 2020. Theoretically the study intends to provide substantial support for risk management by using estimates like hedge ratio, VECM and BEKK GARCH. Practically the study aims to provide empirical justifications for investors, managers and policy makers to figure out exactly where crypto-currencies stand along with other asset classes, and what actually it brings to the financial system. It concludes that there is long term causal relationship running from traditional assets to crypto-currency market, co-movements are observed. The change in crypto-currency returns may not affect returns of traditional assets yet as any change in traditional assets may possibly upsurge towards change in crypto-currency market in the long term which indicates opportunities for crypto-currencies to hedge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a dynamic change of measure approach for computing analytical solutions of expected future prices (and therefore, expected returns) of contingent claims over a finite horizon. The new approach constructs hybrid probability measures called equivalent expectation measures (EEMs) that provide the physical expectation of the claim's future price before the horizon date, and serve as pricing measures on or after the horizon date. The EEM theory can be used for empirical investigations of both the cross‐section and the term structure of returns of contingent claims, such as Treasury bonds, corporate bonds, and financial derivatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current theories support an inverse relationship between the expected return on investment and the associated risk. The DCF valuation method highlights the fact that the value of the company is given by the ratio between the excess cash (at the numerator) and the risk assimilated by the capitalization rate (at the denominator). The modern portfolio theory MPT considers that the proportion of recommended securities is on a parabola in mean-variance space, the risk being assimilated to uncertainty. Practitioners assess the target and the risk (take profit/stop loss) based on the methods of technical analysis. We appreciate that these theories are divergent from each other, disconnected and therefore difficult to unify. Our approach, based on the probabilities associated with each level of future quotations, eliminates the disadvantages of current theories. The answer found is to try to establish as realistically as possible what the chances are that, over a certain period of time, a title will have a certain quotation (or be in a certain range). For reasons somewhat similar to those of sports betting, the conclusion that emerges from the article is that this approach, if well developed, gives superior results to those currently used. In subsequent studies, forecasting methods are to be developed, because we consider them the most important in the investment process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, using data from 46 markets and a 34-year time period, we examine the impact of the illiquidity of U.S. Treasuries on global asset valuation. We find that it predicts equity returns in both developed and emerging markets. This predictive relation remains intact after controlling for various world- and country-level variables. Asset pricing tests further reveal that bond illiquidity is a priced factor even in the presence of other conventional risks. Since the illiquidity of Treasuries is known to reflect monetary and macroeconomic shocks, our results suggest that it can be considered a proxy for aggregate worldwide risks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We provide a comprehensive empirical analysis of the effects of liquidity and information risks on expected returns of Treasury bonds. We focus on the systematic liquidity risk of Pastor and Stambaugh as opposed to the traditional microstructure-based measures of liquidity. Information risk is measured by the probability of information-based trading (PIN). We document a strong positive relation between expected Treasury returns and liquidity and information risks, controlling for the effects of other systematic risk factors and bond characteristics. This relation is robust to many empirical specifications and a wide variety of traditional liquidity and informed trading proxies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the yield curve behavior and the relative performance of affine term structure models (ATSMs) using government bond yield data from Canada, Germany, Japan, the U.K., and the U.S. We find strong predictability of forward rates for excess bond returns and reject the expectations hypothesis in all five countries. A three-factor model is sufficient to capture movements in the yield curve of Canada, Japan, the U.K., and the U.S., but may not be enough for Germany. An exhaustive comparison among ATSMs with no more than three factors reveals that the three-factor essential affine model (A1(3)E), with only one factor affecting the volatility of the short rate but with all three factors affecting the price of risk, performs best in all five countries. Simulations provide inconclusive evidence on whether this best affine model can successfully generate the rich yield curve behavior observed in the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to explain the spread between rates on corporate and government bonds. We show that expected default accounts for a surprisingly small fraction of the premium in corporate rates over treasuries. While state taxes explain a substantial portion of the difference, the remaining portion of the spread is closely related to the factors that we commonly accept as explaining risk premiums for common stocks. Both our time series and cross-sectional tests support the existence of a risk premium on corporate bonds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a discussion on the effectiveness of realized returns to establish expected returns. The author argues that realized returns are a poor measure of expected returns and points to the existence of various anomalous results and to evidence from U.S. and Asian markets that affirm this point. He suggests that there is a need to develop better measures of expected returns and ways to test asset pricing theories that do not require the use of realized returns, which can provide skew results. To do so he examines the expected returns on government bonds.

We provide a formal test of the liquidity preference hypothesis (LPH), that is, the monotonicity of ex ante term premiums, using nonparametric estimates that do not require a structural model for conditional expected returns. Although the point estimates of the term premiums are consistent with previous conclusions in the literature regarding violations of the LPH, the test statistics are generally insignificant, even when powerful conditioning information is used. These results illustrate the importance of correctly accounting for correlations across maturities and of formally testing the inequality restrictions implied by the LPH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to offer a new explanation for the momentum effect in international government bonds. Using cross-sectional and time-series tests, we examine a sample of bonds from 22 countries for the years 1980 through 2018. We document significant momentum profits that are not attributable to bond-specific risk factors, such as volatility or credit risk. The global bond momentum is driven by the returns on underlying foreign exchange rates. Controlling for currency movements fully explains the abnormal returns on momentum strategies in international government bonds. The results are robust to many considerations including alternative sorting periods, portfolio construction methods, as well as subperiod and subsample analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reexamines the work by researchers Robert Engle, Victor Ng, and Michael Rothschild in 1990 on the Factor ARCH model for Treasury bills using a larger data set. It aims to discover how changes in the return premia relate to changes in the liquidity preference of investors. The research provides insight into the nature of yield curves and the relationship between volatility levels the shape of the curves. The authors recommend further work on volatility-based premium adjustments and how they affect term structure of interest rates.

The existing empirical literature fails to agree on the nature of the intertemporal relation between risk and return. This paper attempts to resolve the issue by estimating a conditional two-factor model motivated by Merton's intertemporal capital asset pricing model. When long-term government bond returns are included as a second factor, the partial relation between the market risk premium and conditional market variance is found to be positive and significant. The paper also helps explain the convoluted empirical relation between the market risk premium, conditional market variance, and the nominal risk-free rate previously reported in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I document a dramatic increase in the importance of two types of variation in Treasury bill yields beginning in the early 1980s. The first is idiosyncratic variation in individual short-maturity (less than three months) bill yields. The second is a common component in Treasury bill yields that is not shared by yields on other instruments, such as short-maturity privately-issued instruments or longer-maturity Treasury notes and bonds. Some evidence suggests the first type reflects increased market segmentation. These results have important implications for the calibration and testing of no-arbitrage term structure models and interpreting tests of the expectations hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the risks and returns of long-term low-grade bonds for the period 1977-1989. We find: (1) low-grade bonds realized higher returns than higher-grade bonds and lower returns than common stocks, and low-grade bonds exhibited less volatility than higher-grade bonds due to their call features and high coupons; (2) there is no relation between the age of low-grade bonds and their realized returns; cyclical factors explain much of the observed relation between default rates and bond age; and (3) low-grade bonds behave like both bonds and stocks. Despite this complexity there is no evidence that low-grade bonds are systematically over- or under-priced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical evidence of time varying term premia in bond returns is frequently interpreted as evidence against the Expectations Hypothesis. This paper shows that the Expectations Hypothesis can actually imply time varying term premia if the time frame for which the Expectations Hypothesis holds differs from the return measurement period. Furthermore, many of the properties of these term premia are consistent with those of observed term premia. These results are important because they imply that the case against the Expectations Hypothesis is weaker than claimed in the empirical literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors investigate the extent to which intra-week seasonality still exists and whether its pattern is uniform across three stock indices and Treasury bonds with seven different maturities. They find that intra-week seasonality continues to be significant and that its pattern is not uniform, either between the stock indices and the Treasury bonds or even among the bonds alone. A pattern shared by stocks and bonds is that Monday returns become increasingly negative with maturity. These findings suggest that neither institutional nor general-equilibrium explanations by themselves can explain the pattern of intra-week seasonality in securities markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides evidence that changes in government bond yields clearly affect ex post returns to electric utilities, and that this phenomenon is concentrated to a much larger extent in this particular industry than in NYSE firms as a whole (Table I). Evidence of the pricing is provided within the framework of the APT. Empirical work employed a pooled cross-section approach using a nonlinear constrained version of FIML estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expectations theories of asset returns may be interpreted either as stating that risk premia are zero or that they are constant through time. Under the former interpretation, different versions of the expectations theory of the term structure are inconsistent with one another, but I show that this does not necessarily carry over to the constant risk premium interpretation of the theory. I present a general equilibrium example in which different types of risk premium are constant through time and dependent only on maturity. Furthermore, I argue that differences among expectations theories are second-order effects of bond yield variability. I develop an approximate linearized framework for analysis of the term structure in which these differences disappear, and I test its accuracy in practice using data from the CRSP government bond tapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical tests are reported for Ross' arbitrage pricing theory using monthly data for U.S. Treasury securities during the 1960-1979 period. We find that mean returns on bond portfolios are linearly related to at least two factor loadings. Multivariate test results, however, are not consistent with the APT. Our sample data in the U.S. Treasury securities market are also not consistent with either version of the CAPM. One-month-ahead forecasts of excess returns using factor-generating models are compared with corresponding naive predictions or predictions using the "market model" with various market portfolios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investors' security demands and two points on the yield curve are jointly determined using a disaggregated structural model of the U.S. Treasury securities market. The empirical results indicate that the structural model is capable of accurately explaining Treasury yields and that changes in a variety of nonyield variables affect the yield curve. Among these nonyield variables are Treasury security supplies, which are found to have significant but somewhat volatile impacts depending on investors' wealth flows. The within-sample predictions from the structural model are also compared to those of a naive model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common statistic for a bond is its market yield or internal rate of return. Numerous articles have been written utilizing the internal rate of return to examine the price volatility of bonds. However, all these studies have two factors in common. One, they are nonstochastic and two, they involve Macaulay's duration. This paper, by introducing uncertainty, derives the general relationship between the expected return on a bond and its market yield. The derivation is for risky corporate as well as for default free government bonds. The relationship is nonlinear and involves an expression which is an approximation to the duration of a bond. As a corollary to the above methodology, an alternate expression for the systematic risk of a bond is discovered. The expression involves only the market yield and the approximation to a bond's duration. This corollary generalizes the previous work of Boquist, Racette, and Schalarbaum in two respects. First, this paper's formulation is for any type of a bond, while Boquist, et al. examined only default free securities. Second, the single period capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is replaced by its intertemporal counterpart as formulated by Merton. An outline for the paper is as follows. Section I derives the relationship between a bond's market yield and expected return. Section II examines the systematic risk of a bond, while Section III concludes the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observed differentials among yield series for different types of long-term instruments—U.S, government bonds, municipal bonds, corporate bonds and residential mortgages—vary considerably over time. Many factors can contribute to observed long-term yield spreads, the most important of which are "technical" factors that relate to differences in the particular characteristics of instruments or in the investors that purchase them. These include the tax status of various types of income accruing to the security and the degree of certainty associated with that income. Long-term yield spreads might also be affected by relative security supplies and relatively exogenous demands, e.g., Federal agency demands for residential mortgages, particularly if institutional constraints on permissible yields or on the various sectors that purchase the long-term instruments exist. Failure to consider the effects of all of these factors has frequently created misunderstanding both in the financial press and in academia about the causes of observed yield spreads. For example, attempts have been made to measure the impact on long-term yield spreads of individual factors—such as default risk or relative security supplies—by comparing yield series without proper regard for the concurrent impact of other technical and/or fundamental factors. This paper deals exclusively with long-term corporate and U.S. government bond yields. The most widely used series are Salomon Brother's Aa deferred call new issue utility yield and the Federal Reserve Bulletin's average yield on bonds maturing or callable in 10 years or more. The spread between these series is shown as the solid line in Chart 1. (The dashed line will be discussed later.) The spread has moved over a wide range, rising sharply from 40 basis points in late 1965 to 235 basis points in the second quarter of 1970, subsequently falling to 140 basis points in early 1973, and then rising to almost 300 b... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on a paper published within the issue, "New Evidence on the Capital Asset Pricing Model," by Irwin Friend, Randolph Westerfield, and Michael Granito. The author reviews the paper and discusses the two tests used on the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). The model is first tested on its own ground, then using an expanded set of securities including bonds and stocks. The author notes that greater availability of bond data makes it possible to better estimate the market portfolio. It is also mentioned that individual bond returns may be used for cross-sectional testing of the CAPM.

The article focuses on the impact of commercial banks' portfolio behavior on the determination of treasury security yields. The role of commercial banks as depository financial intermediaries is considered. Treasury security portfolios are noted as an important element of the transmission mechanism which links commercial banks' portfolio adjustment to financial markets. The determinants of bank demand for treasury securities are discussed. The author estimates the demands for two maturity classes of Treasury securities by commercial banks, then proceeds to combine them with a supply-demand model of Treasury security yield determination.

The article presents a model that looks at the performance of government securities in the U.S. and how they are affected by interest rates in the foreign exchange market. It is thought that the constant adjustment of the yield curve will mean that the curve's future movements are disconnected, but the authors argue that the curve can be predicted through economic information. The authors' model is used to calculate the expected return of foreign exchange rates and are checked using a calculation of holding period returns for various short-terms.

The article discusses the factors that regulate the price volatility of bonds and how that is determined by yield volatility and the duration of payments. The paper argues that economic information plays an important role in figuring out a bond's price volatility. It is noted that historical market information is needed in order to create an accurate idea of how bond maturity impacts volatility. The article concludes that bond duration and yield volatility can be used as factors to calculate price volatility.

This article investigates differences in yields on identical Treasury notes and bills and shows that they reflect differences in liquidity (immediacy) risk and taxes. It proposes an empirical measure for differences in the liquidity risk of notes and bills: the volatility of the underlying rate times the ratio of bills' turnover to notes' turnover. Because differential taxes affect sellers but not buyers of bills and notes, the results reject, free of informational problems, the hypothesis that the notes' demand curve is horizontal. Note-bill yield differences also decrease with inventories of notes--the less liquid asset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines rational expectations in the Treasury bill market from 1961 to 1988 with a risk premium specified to be proportional to the volatility of excess returns using instrumental variables. From 1961 to 1972 and from 1972 to 1979, rational expectations cannot be rejected, and both the predictive power of the yield curve and the risk premium are highly significant. By contrast, with just a constant risk premium and with a risk premium proxied by moving averages of absolute interest rate changes, rational expectations are rejected for each subperiod, and the yield curve has significant predictive information only from 1972 to 1979. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses increase in the convenience yield on the U.S. treasury bond assigned by foreign investors, impact on the U.S. dollar and appreciation of the exchange rate. Topics include asset market equilibrium, bond pricing conditions and benchmark case of risk neutrality for foreign investments.

Abstract: In February 2005 Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan noticed that the 10‐year Treasury yields failed to increase despite a 150‐basis‐point increase in the federal funds rate and called it a “conundrum.” This paper investigates the historical relationship between the 10‐year Treasury yield and the federal funds rate and finds that the relationship changed dramatically in the late 1980s, well in advance of Greenspan's observation. The paper evaluates three competing hypotheses for the change. The evidence from a variety of sources supports the conclusion that the most plausible explanation is that the change occurred because the FOMC began using the federal funds rate as a policy instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: This paper examines co‐movement between stock returns and changes in 10‐year government bond yields as well as flight‐to‐quality behaviour in G7 countries. We conduct the wavelet squared coherence analysis to explore the dynamics in both time and frequency domain. Our results provide evidence of positive co‐movements, which vary over time and across investment horizon. The higher co‐movement is found to be more concentrated in the lower frequency bands. We further analyse the dynamic nature of the scale‐dependent wavelet correlations and find that the correlations are highly volatile and significantly increase across different time scales during the episodes of equity market turbulence. The increase in correlations reflects flights from stocks to safer bond investments as a result of dramatic changes in investor sentiment and risk aversion at times of market stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relationship between a bond's duration and the yield curve. That a bond's coupon affects its maturity has been acknowledged and commented upon by several authors. Some commentators have expressed the belief that yields are a function of a bond's duration, while others have asserted that the two are completely unrelated. The author presents analysis that shows while duration is a function of the yield curve, the opposite is not true. Given two bonds that always have the same duration and yields to maturity, the entire yield curve from the first two forward rates can be recursively constructed.