pre-FOMC Drift Research Articles

The Pre-FOMC Drift and the Secular Decline in Long-Term Interest Rates

The Pre-FOMC Drift and the Secular Decline in Long-Term Interest Rates

Institutional Trading around FOMC Meetings: Evidence of Fed Leaks

Using detailed institutional transaction records from Ancerno, I find evidence consistent with informed trading on the days before the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) scheduled announcements. The institutional trading imbalances on highly exposed stocks are in the direction of the subsequent monetary policy surprises. On the three days before a 1% surprise rate increase, the institutional trading imbalance is 27.7% higher for high-MPE stocks as compared to low-MPE stocks. This result is particularly strong before easing monetary policy shocks - when the aggregate market reaction is positive -, for the most-active traders and the hedge fund management companies, and for the US institutions that are headquartered close to one of the regional reserve banks. It holds throughout the Ancerno's sample, from 1999 to 2014. Overall, these findings are consistent with a hypothesis of a systematic informal communication of Fed officials with the financial sector, provide an additional channel through which institutions make abnormal profits from their intra-quarter trades, and contribute to an information-based explanation of the pre-FOMC drift.

The disappearing pre-FOMC announcement drift

Lucca and Moench (2015) document large average excess returns in U.S. equities before scheduled Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings from September 1994 to March 2011, leading to a puzzle not explained by standard asset pricing theory. We extend the sample to December 2019. We find that after first appearing before FOMC announcements accompanied by the Fed Chair press conferences, the pre-FOMC drift essentially disappeared after 2015 in both announcements accompanied by press conferences and announcements not accompanied by press conferences. We discuss a possible explanation for this change: reduced uncertainty.

The Pre-FOMC Announcement Drift and Private Information: Kyle Meets Macro-Finance

This paper proposes and tests the private information explanation for the time series of pre-FOMC announcement drift through risk reduction. Using transaction-level data, I document the informed trading is in the same direction of the realized returns in the 24-hour window before FOMC announcements, coinciding with the pre-FOMC uncertainty reduction. I integrate Kyle's (1985) model into a standard consumption-based asset pricing framework where the market makers are compensated for the risk of assets' fundamentals. Observing aggregate order flow, they update the belief about the marginal utility-weighted asset value, which resolves uncertainty gradually and results in an upward drift in market prices before announcements. I demonstrate that there is a strictly positive pre-FOMC drift if and only if the market makers require risk compensation.

Pre-Announcement Risk

I propose and test a new explanation for the pre-FOMC announcement drift puzzle. I show that such a drift arises in a model where investors interpret a given FOMC action differently based on recent news. If recent news has been good, FOMC announcements are seen as signals about economic conditions; if recent news has been poor, they are seen as signals about the Fed's own policy stance. Consistent with the model, I demonstrate that the market return prior to the announcement—a proxy for recent news—predicts the interpretation of Fed action. In the model the pre-FOMC drift represents a risk premium associated with the resolution of uncertainty about announcement type. The model does not require informational leaks or biased beliefs and can account for the seasonality of aggregate returns over the FOMC calendar.

Pre-FOMC Announcement Relief

We show that the pre-FOMC announcement drift in equity returns occurs mostly in periods of high market uncertainty or risk premium. Specifically, this abnormal return is explained by a significant reduction in the risk premium (implied volatility and variance risk premium) prior to the announcement, but only when the risk premium is high, e.g., when it is above its median. Likewise, the magnitude of the FOMC Cycle and other related patterns varies with uncertainty and risk premium. Market uncertainty measures are persistent and are not related to policy uncertainty or expectations. Markets become only marginally stressed in the days prior to the announcement and changes in uncertainty appear to be of lower frequency. We also explain why recent studies suggest that the pre-FOMC drift might have disappeared in the past decade, as this moderation is due to time variation that was also present in older data. Additionally, CAPM only works on FOMC dates when the risk premium is high, e.g., implied vol above its prior median level. The results are robust to different samples and measures of risk premium and uncertainty.

Informed Corporate Credit Market before Monetary Policy Surprises: Explaining Pre-FOMC Stock Market Movements

We show that U.S. corporate bond market movements during the days preceding FOMC announcements can predict monetary policy surprises, as well as the pre-FOMC stock market movements. Starting several days before an expansionary (contractionary) surprise in FOMC decisions, corporate bond prices surge (decline) and yield spreads decline (surge). The pattern is statistically and economically significant. Moreover, corporate bond customers buy (sell) more often from dealers before expansionary (contractionary) surprises, suggesting that in aggregate they have more accurate information about the outcome of FOMC announcements. A portfolio that mimics customer trades is profitable with a Sharpe ratio of 0.64 and is profitable before both contractionary and expansionary surprises. Furthermore, consistent with the informativeness of corporate bond transactions, we show that lagged corporate bond customer-dealer trade imbalances can predict pre-FOMC stock market movements and explain pre-FOMC drift. Corporate bond yield changes “Granger-cause” stock pre-FOMC movements, and a 1% surge in the constructed TRACE bond yield during a 2 p.m.-to-2 p.m. period ending one day before an FOMC announcement, predicts a 5.8% decline in the S&P 500 index for the 2 p.m.-to-2 p.m. period ending on the FOMC meeting day. This bond-to-stock granger causality does not exist for non-pre-FOMC periods and is stronger for the companies with higher probability of default.

The Disappearing Pre-FOMC Announcement Drift

Lucca and Moench (2015) document large average excess returns in U.S. equities before scheduled Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings from September 1994 to March 2011, leading to a puzzle not explained by standard asset pricing theory. We extend the sample to December 2019. We find that after first appearing before FOMC announcements accompanied by the Fed Chair press conferences, the pre-FOMC drift essentially disappeared after 2015 in both announcements accompanied by press conferences and announcements not accompanied by press conferences. We discuss a possible explanation for this change: reduced uncertainty.

The Pre-FOMC Drift Explored

The pre-FOMC drift was first published in 2011 and is a strong driver of equity market performance over the last 30 years. The effect is able to explain approximately half of all the equity market returns over the measured period. We verify the results of prior studies. Furthermore, the report dives into conditional factors; equity market trend and monetary policy action to see if there is any difference in terms of macro variables. We find that FOMC is rather stable throughout time, macro conditions and has not been dependent on a particular Fed Chair. It seems as if the markets are expecting that the FOCM will infuse optimism into equity markets as the majority of the gains occurs before the actual announcement. The effect can be due to behavioral issues and herding among market participants but can also be due to information leakage. The effect remains unexplained.