Bond Market Index Research Articles

Bilateral investment treaties and sovereign default risk: Evidence for emerging markets

AbstractThis paper analyses the impact of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on sovereign default risk using monthly data for 29 emerging markets from 1996 to 2016. Under a BIT, foreign investors can use an international arbitration scheme to enforce compensation claims against the host country's government. We focus on the so far unexplored legal risk associated with BITs since a higher likelihood of government expropriations implicitly increases public debt. We do not find a significant unconditional effect of BITs on sovereign default risk (measured by the month‐over‐month percentage change in a country's Emerging Market Bond Index). Considering the heterogeneity of BITs and political risk, we find robust and strong negative effects of BITs on sovereign bond returns. In countries with high political risk of expropriation (measured by low executive constraints), we find that the implementation of BITs with strong investor protection is associated with a significantly negative impact on sovereign bond returns (−0.45 percentage points), which compares to roughly 11.7% of bond returns' monthly standard deviation.

Can NFTs hedge the risk of traditional assets after the COVID-19 pandemic?

Our study analyzes the dynamic spillover effects between the NFT market, Bitcoin market, oil market, gold futures market, S&P 500 stock index, bond market, and US dollar index over three time periods: the full sample period (2017/6/23–2022/9/2), before the COVID-19 outbreak (2017/6/23–2020/1/12), and after the COVID-19 outbreak (2020/1/13–2022/9/2) by employing the DCC-GARCH-based connectedness model. Furthermore, we apply the DCC-GARCH-t-Copula model, Risk Parity Portfolio (RPP) model, and Minimum Connectedness Portfolio (MCoP) model to evaluate the bilateral dynamic hedge ratios, portfolio weights, and the multivariate portfolio performance of these financial assets, respectively. Our findings suggest that NFTs are a source of volatility spillovers during both periods and that the COVID-19 outbreak accelerates the speed and intensity of volatility spillovers from NFTs to traditional financial markets. Moreover, most of the volatility spillovers from NFTs are caused by own shocks, which implies that NFTs are not susceptible to financial risk contagion. The results of bilateral portfolio analysis show that NFTs can effectively hedge other traditional financial assets when used as long positions. The results of multivariate portfolio analysis demonstrate that NFTs can also reduce investment risk despite their smaller weighting. In the two months after the COVID-19 outbreak, MCoP slightly outperforms RPP, although RPP outperforms MCoP in general.

Neural network and machine learning use cases: Indian bond market predictions

This study examines machine learning techniques to investigate how artificial intelligence (AI) affects predicting future trends in the bond market. The bond market offers a global perspective on capital costs for a business by establishing the fair value of the bond issue, which is based on multiple factors. The asset price market, which has employed machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) techniques to address the primary forecasting difficulty, surprisingly plays a significant role in predicting future bond market returns. As an outcome, if this gap can be forecast, it can act as the bond market's data-driven long-term direction and yield additional profits. Daily security-specific data for the 10-to-3-year Indian Treasury Bond (ITB) was gathered from 2013 to 2022 and is available in the global government bonds database. The researchers looked at how well the auto-regressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), linear regression, and deep recurrent neural network-long short-term memory (DLSTM) models could predict bond yields and returns in future bond markets. The empirical results demonstrate that the DLSTM models most fairly predict the price of government bonds over both the short and longer horizons when compared to ARIMA and linear regression.

Downside risk connectedness between Islamic sectors and green bond markets: implications for hedging and investment strategies

ABSTRACT This study explores the relationship between the green bond and Islamic sectoral markets in terms of downside risk. A new framework was developed using CAViaR and QVAR techniques to construct hedging and portfolio strategies. Results show higher levels of downside risk connectedness and spillover across different risk environments, with short-run connectedness outperforming long-run. The downside risk connectedness and spillover are time-varying, influenced by major events like the Shale Oil Revolution, US–China trade war, COVID-19 pandemic, and Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Green bond market indices of China, the European Union, the US, and the global market receive net shocks in moderate and higher downside risk environments across various frequencies. US and global green bonds exhibit net transmitter roles in a downside-risk environment. Islamic Sectors BM, OG, FIN, CG, and HC are shock transmitters, while TELE and UTL are shock receivers across different downside risk environments and frequencies. Net roles are CS, INDUS, and TECH, subject to the downside risk environment and frequencies.

The Impact of U.S. Quantitative Easing (QE) Announcements on Indian Government Bond Yields

This study investigates the impact of U.S. Quantitative Easing (QE) announcements on Indian Treasury yields. Two outstanding channels of spillover effects on bond yields documented in the existing literature are signalingchannel and portfolio balance channel. This study decomposes Indian Treasury yields into yield expectationsand risk premia to measure spillover effects of U.S. QE announcements. The impact on yield expectationmeasures signaling effect while the impact on risk premia measures portfolio balance effect. It is observed that FOMC announcements of Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing (QE) policy treated as shocks to Indian government bond yields. To investigate the announcement effects on Indian government Bond yields, event study methodology is used to capture the change in the bond yields, yield expectation and risk premia of Indian bond market around that time especially during the first round of Quantitative Easing (QE1) policy announcement periods in one-day and two-day window period. To support event study results regression analysis method is implemented and found robust evidence supporting larger signaling effect than the portfolio balance effect. At last, this study uses Dynamic Nelson-Siegel (DNS) yield curve model to compute the relationship between the U.S. and Indian Bond market. DNS model involves two-step estimation using VAR regression on Indian government bond yields with U.S. 10-year Treasury yield changes as an exogenous variable. The statistical result of DNS estimation shows that U.S. 10-year Treasury yield change affects the Indian long-term bond yield during the financial crisis period.

Active versus Passive: In the Bond Universe

The recent rapid growth of passive investment instruments in the fixed-income market raises the question of their relative outperformance compared to corresponding active investment strategies. This article analyzes an ample sample of actively managed global bond funds over the period from 2010 to 2020 and compares them with the performance of the passive instruments tracking the apposite bond market index, namely, the Bloomberg Barclays Multiverse Index. On average, the active bond managers and index are roughly in line. However, a closer look at the distribution of returns on active strategies shows that some managers are successful in beating the index frequently or over many years.

Global Bond Allocation Using Duration Times Spread

The duration times the credit spread of a bond, denoted DTS, is an effective proxy for its price variance. On an aggregate level, the measure is key to specifying the covariance between bond prices as well. Using a sample of government bond market indices, the author shows that the duration and spread, both on an index level, explain the largest share of the price variance and covariance between government bond markets. The bonds in the indices are denominated in local currency and are hedged against exchange-rate risk. The findings provide new insights for managing bond risk in globally invested portfolios.

Measurement of spillover effect between green bond market and traditional bond market in China

<abstract> <p>With the aim of effectively preventing and controlling systemic risk, by stimulating the advancement of the green bond market, it is significant and imperative to help investors and policymakers adopt more effective measures, which will ensure them to maximize profit. We construct VAR, DCC-GARCH and Copula-CoVaR models, and study the spillover effect between the green bond market and traditional bond market from the three perspectives of mean spillover, volatility spillover and extreme risk spillover using the data on daily closing prices of green bond market and traditional bond market indices. The research findings of this paper are as follows: (1) There are three spillover effects of mean value, volatility and extreme risk among the green bond market, corporate bond market, enterprise bond market and conventional bond market. (2) From the perspective of mean spillover between markets, only the mean spillover between the conventional bond market and the green bond market is bidirectional, and there is the profoundest impact of spillover from the green bond market to the conventional bond market. (3) As far as the volatility spillover between markets is concerned, the volatility spillover between the three traditional bond market and the green bond markets are all positive. The volatility spillover between the conventional bond market and the green bond market is the largest, which is particularly obvious in the first half of 2018 and the first half of 2020. (4) In terms of inter-market extreme risk spillover, the risk spillover between the green bond market and the traditional bond market is positive. The green bond market contributes more to the risk spillover of the enterprise bond market, and it has a time-varying risk spillover effect on the traditional bond market.</p> </abstract>

COVID 19 Outbreak and Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games: A Perspective from Japan’s Economy and Capital Market

This study highlights the key impacts of hosting an international sports event, Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, during the period of deadliest contagious disease outbreak in history, COVID 19. The perspective is analysed in terms of the performance of capital market, investment market and sectoral market by the indexes of TOPIX, Stock Market, Bond Market, Foreign Exchange, FTSE, MSCI, and sectoral index of Air Transportation, Construction, Pharmaceutical which shows different range of fluctuation.

Inferences from Portfolio Theory and Efficient Market Hypothesis to the Impact of Social Media on Sovereign Debt: Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru

For three countries of similar economic characteristics, I ratify previous studies of the impact of fundamental macroeconomic and foreign exchange variables influencing country risk, as captured by the Emerging Market Bond Index (EMBI). I contribute to existing research, first by calculating a proxy of risk I call endogenous risk that analyzes the quarterly variability of economic activity, and second, by calculating a variable of sentiment from Twitter activity. I gauge the impact of both on the country risk metric in addition to variables in existing research about the determinants of country risk. Foreign exchange variables are the most significant determinants of risk for the countries of Colombia and Peru, which actively manage their currency, while Ecuador’s country risk is mostly affected by endogenous risk and macroeconomic fundamentals.

Infectious disease (COVID-19)-related uncertainty and the safe-haven features of bonds markets

Purpose This study aims to examine the hedge, diversifier and safe-haven properties of bonds against infectious disease-related equity market volatility (IDEMV), like COVID-19.Design/methodology/approach The authors apply wavelet coherence methodology on the daily data of IDEMV and bond market (US, UK, Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Sweden, China and Europe) indices from 1 January 2000 to 14 February 2021.Findings The results show no significant co-movement between these bond indices and IDEMV, thus confirming that they serve as a hedge against IDEMV. However, during the turbulent period like COVID-19, the authors find that the US, UK, Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Sweden, China and European bond markets act as safe-haven against IDEMV, whereas the UK, US, Japan and Canadian bond markets demonstrate an in-phase and positive co-movement with IDEMV during COVID-19, suggesting their role as a diversifier.Research limitations/implications The study findings are important for investors and portfolio managers regarding risk management, portfolio diversification and investment strategies.Originality/value The authors contribute to the fast growing body of work on the financial impacts of COVID-19 as well as to ongoing consideration of whether a bond is a safe-haven investment.

The Influence of ASEAN Bond Market Integration in the Philippines’ Inflationary Pressures, Credit Expansions, and its Challenges

Bond markets have grown mature in many countries; however, the quality of financial integration varies across ASEAN economies. In the case of bond markets in the ASEAN +3, they experienced fast development; however, they are still less integrated. This study attempts to examine the ramifications of the ASEAN bond market integration and past crises to the Philippines’ inflation, credit, and growth and identify what impedes the development of the bond market for the period of 1992 to 2017. The study also aims to have a more in-depth analysis on preventing rises from happening and controlling both credit expansions and inflationary pressures. The Ordinary Least Square method (OLS) was used to examine the relationship of inflation, credit, bond market index, real interest rate, and integration to the Philippines’ growth. This led to this paper providing empirical insights that credit has a significant positive relationship with GDP growth; while, inflation has a significant negative relationship with GDP growth. However, the bond market index and integration showed insignificant negative results. This study provides possible reasons for the said conclusion and suggests ways not only to develop and grow the debt market in the Philippines but also to sustain long-run economic stability and growth to become on par with other ASEAN economies.

Risk-dependent centrality in the Brazilian stock market

Abstract The purpose of this article is to calculate the risk-dependent centrality (RDC) assessing the Brazilian stock market. We computed the RDC for assets traded on the Brazilian stock market between January 2008 and June 2020 at different levels of external risk. We observed that the ranking of assets based on the RDC depends on the external risk. Rankings’ volatility is related to crisis events, capturing the recent Brazilian economic-political crisis. Moreover, we computed the RDC employing an empirically computed external risk level, relying on the Emerging Markets Bond Index index. We show that some economic sectors (oil, gas and biofuels and financial) become more central during crisis periods. Moreover, the volatility of the RDC is positively correlated with the external risk level.

Term structure estimation with liquidity-adjusted Ane Nelson Siegel model: A nonlinear state space approach applied to the Indian bond market

ABSTRACT Efficient term structure estimation in emerging markets is difficult not only because of overall lack of liquidity, but also because of the concentration of liquidity in a few securities. Using the arbitrage-free Affine Nelson-Siegel model, we explicitly incorporate this phenomenon using a proxy for liquidity based on observable data in the bond pricing function and estimate the term structure for Indian Government bond markets in a nonlinear state space setting using the Unscented Kalman Filter. We find strong empirical evidence in support of the extended model with both i) a better in-sample fit to bond prices, and ii) the likelihood ratio test rejecting the restrictions assumed in the standard AFNS specification. In an alternative specification, we also model liquidity as a latent risk factor within the AFNS framework. The estimated latent liquidity factor is found to be strongly correlated with the standard market benchmarks of overall liquidity and the India VIX index.

US QE and the Indian Bond Market.

This paper examines the long- and short-run spillover effects of US quantitative easing (QE) on the benchmark 10-year Indian government bond (IGB) yield by Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing co-integration approach using monthly data from September 2008 to June 2019. The results show that a 10%-point rise in US QE led to a 4 bp rise in yields. The counterfactual analysis shows that volatility of the yields would have been less without the QE. During the episodes of QE, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had to alter its policy rate and engage in open-market operations (OMOs) to simultaneously maintain liquidity in the system and reduce the volatility of interest rates. Spillover on the debt yield leads to mispricing of assets and partial loss of the monetary-policy autonomy of the RBI.

The Argument for Bonds in Strategic Asset Allocation

A number of well-known practitioners such as Warren Buffett and Jeremy Siegel have long advocated a strategic asset allocation in which investors hold a majority of their assets in equities. However, in this simple straightforward study of investable indices, the authors find that in order to maximize the well-known Sharpe ratio, most investors over the period 1995–2019 would have been better off holding a majority of their assets in bond indices rather than stock indices. While interest rates have decreased during this 25-year period and thus enhanced bond relative returns, their results are quite convincing. Even though the results are obviously ex post, investors very often make decisions on future investment based on past performance and thus our results could provide guidance to investors for future investing decisions. <b>Key Findings</b> ▪ In order to maximize the Sharpe ratio, most investors over the 1995–2019 period would have been better off holding a majority of their assets in bond indices rather than stock indices. ▪ For a portfolio at the 4% annualized standard deviation level, the percentage that should have been held in a US aggregate bond index over the time period studied is 79%, on average. As the risk level increases, the percentage held in the US bond index decreases substantially in favor of investing in an emerging market bond index. For a portfolio at the 10% annualized standard deviation level, the percentage that should have been held in an emerging market bond index is approximately 63%, on average. ▪ Bond indices, whether they be domestic or emerging markets indices, should have been a much larger proportion of one’s portfolio than is often stated by finance professionals and commentators.

Similarity evidence between the country risk and the idiosyncratic risk: An empirical study of the Brazilian case

Purpose - This paper estimates the idiosyncratic risk (IDR) time series in the Brazilian economy and verifies its interaction with the Brazilian country risk indicators, measured by the EMBI+ (the Emerging Markets Bond Index).Methods - This paper estimates various regression models to capture the dynamic nature of the variables. The models include the heteroscedastic conditional autoregressive models and vector error correction models (VECM). Findings - The results show similarities or associations between the two indicators with interactions in the short and long run. The idiosyncratic risk proves to be a relevant indicator of the risk of economic activities implemented within the scope of the Brazilian economy and can help evaluate investments in related projects. This results also provide evidence of cointegration between the EMBI+ and IDR variations.Implication - This result suggests an alternative way for obtaining estimates of the expected return required by economic agents in financing and investing in productive and infrastructure projects necessary for developing the Brazilian economy that provides greater employability and good social welfare.Originality - This paper provides an alternative estimate of the time series proxy of idiosyncratic risk in the Brazilian economy. It also compares the results with the time series results obtained from the country risk measure EMBI+, widely used among resource managers in the international markets.

Understanding the preference of individual retail investors on green bond in India: An empirical study

The biggest challenge facing countries, including India, is creating and managing an LCR (low carbon resilient) economy, which balances the need for high growth rates and is environmentally sustainable. The green bond market provides investors the means to help change the economy into an LCR economy. The study was undertaken to understand the key drivers and the factors influencing the individual retail investor’s decision to invest in green bonds. A survey instrument was designed and administered through the snowball sampling technique to 125 Indian respondents of various age groups who were eligible to invest in the Indian bond market. SPSS software was used to conduct a descriptive analysis followed by regression and conjoint analyses. The study results suggest that the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) rating and credit rating of the green bond issuers are the key factors that influence an individual’s investment decision. The findings also highlight that incentives such as tax exemptions and awareness of green bonds also affect an investor’s decision. This research stands out as one of the first attempts to understand the Indian retail investors’ perception of a green bond.

Can fiscal rules improve financial market access for developing countries?

A number of countries have introduced fiscal rules to deter fiscal profligacy, enhance the credibility of fiscal policy, and reduce borrowing costs. In this paper, we examine the outcome of fiscal rules in terms of improving financial market access for developing countries. We use entropy balancing and various propensity score matching. We find that the adoption of fiscal rules reduces sovereign bond spreads and increases sovereign debt ratings for a sample of 36 developing countries, which are part of the JP Morgan Emerging Markets Bond Index Global (EMBIG), for the period 1993-2014. We explain this finding by the effect of fiscal rules on the credibility of a country's fiscal policy: more credible governments are rewarded in the international financial markets by low sovereign bond spreads and high sovereign debt ratings. These results are robust to a wide set of alternative specifications. We also show that this favorable effect is sensitive to several country structural characteristics. Our findings confirm that the adoption and sound implementation of fiscal rules is an instrument for policy makers to improve developing countries’ financial market access.

Determinants of foreign portfolio flows to Indian debt market

Purpose The volatile nature of foreign portfolio flows, especially flows into debt market, has large implications on financial and macroeconomic stability in recipient countries. It is necessary to identify the main drivers of portfolio investments in bond market of developing economies to design effective policies to enhance resilience of the economy and help in managing capital flow volatility. The determinants of foreign portfolio investment to Indian equity market have been examined in literature, but flows to bond market remain unexplored. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to identify the possible determinants of foreign portfolio flows to Indian bond market both in the short and in the long run. Design/methodology/approach This study carries out a time series analysis by deploying autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration of monthly data of the period from January 2002 to December 2016 for the Indian economy. A mix of pull and push factors has been analysed in this study. Domestic growth, domestic stock market performance, interest rate differential, exchange rate, volatility in exchange rate, stock market returns in other emerging economies, foreign output growth and dummy variables to trace the external developments such as global financial crisis and unconventional monetary policies of advanced economies have been used as explanatory variables. Findings The dominant pull factor such as interest rate differential explains the dynamics of flows in Indian bond market. The relationship between capital movements and interest rate differentials is the most accepted paradigm in international finance (Haynes, 1988). Among other domestic factors are stock market performance, volatility in exchange rates and domestic growth rates which are found to be significant drivers of foreign portfolio bond flows to India. The study also confirmed that global conditions could induce a fast outflow of capital from India. Research limitations/implications The study concludes that both domestic factors and external factors are equally important in determining the foreign portfolio investments in the Indian debt market. Practical implications The empirical analysis conducted in this study suggests that direct and indirect measures can be taken to increase and stabilise foreign investments in the Indian bond market. Direct policy measures refer to those tools which are under the ambit of policymakers. Indirect measures comprise those tools that are not under the direct control of the fiscal and monetary authorities but require coordinated efforts of the government and private sector. In this context, strengthening of not only financial and economic but also administrative institutions will be necessary. Creditworthiness and policy credibility should be improved to address erratic foreign portfolio investment in debt market of India. Originality/value This study is an original research study. This study adds to the existing literature and is expected to guide policymakers on the specific aspect of the management of capital flows as it gets affected by changes in monetary and fiscal policies.