How banks’ dollar holdings drive exchange rate dynamics
Non-U.S. financial institutions hold precautionary positions in U.S. dollar assets as protection against financial shocks. This gives rise to a safety premium on the...
Factor timing
Factors beyond aggregate market risk are sources of alternative risk premia. Factor timing addresses the question when to receive and when to pay such...
The basics of low-risk strategies
Low-risk investment strategies prefer leveraged low-risk assets over high-risk assets. The measure of risk can be based on price statistics, such as volatility and...
The q-factor model for equity returns
Investment-based capital asset pricing looks at equity returns from the angle of issuers, rather than investors. It is based on the cost of capital...
The price effects of order flow
Order flow means buyer- or seller-initiated transactions at electronic exchanges. Order flow consumes liquidity provided by market makers and drives a wedge between transacted...
Dealer capital ratios and FX carry returns
When financial market intermediaries warehouse net risk positions of other market participants the marginal value of their capital should affect the expected and actual...
The low-risk effect: evidence and reason
The low-risk effect refers to the empirical finding that within an asset classes higher-beta securities fail to outperform lower-beta securities. As a result, “betting...
The mighty “long-long” trade
One of the most successful investment strategies since the turn of the century has been the risk-parity “long-long” of combined equity, credit and duration...
Active fund risk premia in emerging markets
Security returns, adjusted for market risk, contain risk premia that compensate for the exposure to active fund risk. The active fund risk premium of...
The implicit subsidies behind simple trading rules
Implicit subsidies are premia paid by large financial markets participants for reasons other than risk-return optimization (view post here). Their estimation requires skill and...
RECENT ARTICLES
Market dynamics: belief, risk, and ambiguity effects
To understand financial market dynamics, it is helpful to distinguish beliefs, attitudes towards risk, and attitudes towards ambiguity. Beliefs are subjective evaluations of future...
Building a real-time market distress index
A new Fed paper explains how to construct a real-time distress index, using the case of the corporate bond market. The index is based...
The financial stability interest rate
The financial stability interest rate is a threshold above which the real interest rate in an economy triggers financial constraints and systemic instability. It...