Information Shares in the U.S. Treasury Market

Abstract

This paper characterizes the tatonnement of high-frequency returns from U.S. Treasury spot and futures markets. In particular, we highlight the previously neglected role of the futures markets in price discovery. The highest futures market shares are in the longest maturities. The estimates of 5-year and 10-year GovPX spot market information shares typically fail to reach 50% from 1999 on. The GovPX information shares for the 2-year contract are higher than those of the 5- and 10-year maturities but also decline after 1998. Standard liquidity measures, including the relative bid-ask spreads, number of trades, and realized volatility are statistically significant and explain up to 21% of daily information shares. The futures market gains information share in about 1/4 of the events where public information is released, but days of macroeconomic announcements rarely explain information shares independently of their effects on liquidity.