The impact of U.S. economic data surprises

October 29, 2016

A new paper estimated the short-term effects of U.S. economic data surprises on treasury notes and USD exchange rates over the past 20 years. All of 21 commonly followed data releases produced highly significant surprise effects at least for parts of the sample. However, only non-farm payrolls produced a consistently highly significant impact. After short-term interest rates reached the zero lower bound, the importance of surprises to CPI inflation, housing indicators and weekly jobless claims increased noticeably, possibly related to the Fed’s struggle with its dual mandate.

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The risk-adjusted covered interest parity

October 22, 2016

The conventional covered interest rate parity has failed in modern FX markets. A new HKIMR paper suggests that this is not a failure of markets or principles, but a failure to adjust the parity correctly for relative counterparty and liquidity risk across currency areas. Specifically, FX swap rates deviate from relative money market rates due to counterparty risk and from relative risk free (OIS) rates due to liquidity risk. Correct adjustment helps to detect true FX market dislocations.

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The global debt overhang

October 15, 2016

A new IMF report illustrates that a large share of both advanced and emerging economies struggle with private debt overhangs. Excessive debt is a drag on growth and a risk for financial stability. Low nominal growth has hampered deleveraging and aggravates these dangers. Moreover, high public sector debt has reduced governments’ capacity to support private balance sheets and stabilize economic growth in future crises. Therefore, the lingering debt overhang provides a strong incentive for fiscal and monetary policies to work towards higher nominal GDP growth now.

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Japan’s yield curve control: the basics

October 8, 2016

The Bank of Japan has once again broken new grounds in monetary policy, now targeting not just the short-term policy rate but – within limits – the 10-year JGB yield. In practice the Bank will secure a positive yield curve against the backdrop of negative short-term rates and negative expected long-term real rates. This is meant to mitigate the debilitating effect of yield compression on the financial system and, probably, to contain the risk of bond yield tantrums in case domestic spending and inflation do pick up. As a side effect, the policy would subsidize long duration carry trades and long-long equity-duration risk parity positions.

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The dominance of price over value

October 1, 2016

Market prices reveal information about fundamental value indirectly. Private research produces information about fundamental value directly. Neither is a perfect indicator of fundamental value: the former due to non-fundamental market factors, and the latter due to limitations of private research. However, plausible theoretical research shows that overtime the information content of prices in respect to (known) fundamentals improves faster due to aggregation and averaging. When this happens investors rationally neglect their own fundamental research. This can erode information efficiency of the market and lead to sustained misalignments if the market as a whole misses key risks and value factors.

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ECB asset purchases: the three transmission channels

September 24, 2016

A new paper suggests that ECB asset purchases influence markets and the economy significantly, mainly through three channels. First, through the asset valuation channel they reduce risk premia and provide capital relief to leveraged institutions, particularly banks. Second, through the signalling channel they enhance the credibility of rates staying low for long. Third, through the re-anchoring channel, asset purchases can reassure the private sector that the central bank remains committed to its long-term inflation target.

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Selecting macro factors for trading strategies

September 17, 2016

A powerful statistical method for selecting macro factors for trading strategies is the “Elastic Net”. The method simultaneously selects factors in accordance with their past predictive power and estimates their influence conservatively in order to contain the influence of accidental correlation. Unlike other statistical selection methods, such as “LASSO”, the “Elastic Net” can make use of a large number of correlated factors, a typical feature of economic time series.

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Mutual fund flows and fire sale risk

September 10, 2016

A new empirical paper looks at the drivers of U.S. mutual funds flows across asset classes. An important finding is that changes of monetary policy expectations towards tightening trigger net outflows from bond funds and net inflows into equity funds. Typically, the costs of redemptions are borne by investors that do not redeem or redeem late. This creates incentives for fire sales and causes of price distortions, particularly if the outlook for monetary policy is revised significantly.

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Corporate bond market momentum: a model

September 3, 2016

An increase in expected default ratios naturally reduces prices for corporate bonds. However, it also triggers feedback loops. First, it reduces funds’ wealth and demand for corporate credit in terms of notional, resulting in selling for rebalancing purposes. Second, negative performance of funds typically triggers investor outflows, resulting in selling for redemption purposes. Flow-sensitive market-making and momentum trading can aggravate these price dynamics. A larger market share of passive funds can increase tail risks.

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The threat from China’s shadow finance

August 27, 2016

In past years China witnessed a boom in shadow finance, particularly in form of entrusted loans. Banks apparently used shadow credit products in large size to circumvent policy restrictions and bank loan regulations. Regulatory tightening has reined in the proliferation of shadow finance since 2014, but outstanding contracts pose serious systemic risk due to the combination of high default risk and dependence on fragile wholesale funding.

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asset management Asset Purchase Program banks bond returns bond yields bubbles capital regulation carry China collateral commodities credit returns default ECB economic data EM equity returns euro area crisis Fed financial crisis FX FX interventions FX returns government debt government deficits herding inflation information insurances Japan leverage liquidity machine learning market turmoil price factors regulation risk management shadow banking statistical methods term structure trend following variance risk premium VIX volatility ZLB
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Macrosynergy is a London based macroeconomic research and technology company whose founders have developed and employed macro quantamental investment strategies in liquid, tradable asset classes, across many markets and for a variety of different factors to generate competitive, uncorrelated investment returns for institutional investors for two decades. Our quantitative-fundamental (quantamental) computing system tracks a broad range of real-time macroeconomic trends in developed and emerging countries, transforming them into macro systematic quantamental investment strategies. In June 2020 Macrosynergy and J.P. Morgan started a collaboration to scale the quantamental system and to popularize tradable economics across financial markets.

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