Scheduled News Announcements Research Articles

The effect of macroeconomic news announcements on the implied volatility of commodities: The role of survey releases

AbstractWe examine the response of the implied volatility in crude oil, gold, and silver commodity markets to macroeconomic news announcements. We find that macroeconomic releases reduce uncertainty in commodity markets consistent with the hypothesis of uncertainty resolution following scheduled news announcements, while macroeconomic releases from the category of survey news announcements increase it. This result can be explained by the qualitative nature of these surveys and their ability to provide information in advance of major official macroeconomic indicators. Nevertheless, we show that survey news announcements can also be useful in resolving commodity market uncertainty in periods of heightened global financial turmoil and when the manufacturing sector of the largest economies is in contraction.

Macroeconomic news announcements and market efficiency: Evidence from the U.S. Treasury market

• This paper investigates the impact of scheduled macroeconomic news announcements on the U.S. Treasury market’s efficiency. • This paper employs a robust method to construct market inefficiency measures using intraday data and controlling for microstructure noise. • The U.S. Treasury market is less efficient in the five-minute interval before news arrival. • Investor heterogeneity provides a possible explanation for the decreased market efficiency before scheduled news announcements. We investigate the impact of scheduled macroeconomic news announcements on the U.S. Treasury market’s efficiency. Using intraday data and controlling for microstructure noise, we employ a robust method to construct market inefficiency measures. We find that the U.S. Treasury market is less efficient in the five-minute interval before news arrival. Our findings are robust for different sample periods, macroeconomic news announcements, and market inefficiency measures. We find that investor heterogeneity provides a possible explanation for the decreased market efficiency before scheduled news announcements.

Firm-specific information and systemic risk

Although there is substantial literature linking news to the asset return volatility of a single asset, little attention has been paid to how news influences the relationships between firms. This paper addresses this issue by examining how firm-specific scheduled and unscheduled news arrivals influence the systemic risk of individual firms based on a sample of 47 US financial institutions. Whereas negative surprises from scheduled news announcements and a higher rate of unscheduled news both increase the systemic risk of a firm, positive news surprises decrease this systemic risk. In addition, negative scheduled news and a higher rate of unscheduled news across the sector increases the total connectedness or systemic risk across the sector as a whole. These effects are magnified when the market is already in distress. The results indicate that regulators should consider more than volatility and pay attention to the news flow when monitoring systemic risk.

The behaviour of energy-related volatility indices around scheduled news announcements: Implications for variance swap investments

This paper investigates the effect of scheduled news announcements on two energy-related volatility indices calculated by the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. These volatility indices are the crude oil volatility index (OVX) and the energy sector volatility index (VXXLE), which measure the market's expectation of 30-day volatility of crude oil prices and energy sector returns, respectively. We find that energy-related volatility indices tend to fall following several US macroeconomic news releases and OPEC meetings. Put differently, these news releases resolve investors' uncertainty about the future development of energy-related markets. Our results also suggest that macroeconomic releases and oil-related events do not seem to exert significantly different impacts on energy market uncertainty. We further document that the observed announcement day patterns cannot be exploited to generate significant returns using variance swaps once we incorporate transaction costs. Our findings are relevant because there are currently no other volatility derivatives traded in exchange markets, such as options or futures, that offer investors pure exposure to energy-related volatility alone as variance swaps do.

Macroeconomic Information and the Implied Volatility: Evidence from India VIX

The present study attempts to examine the scheduled macroeconomic announcement effects on the India VIX using OLS regression model and the EGARCH model. The empirical results show that the information content of macroeconomic news on report day and day after does not have significant influences on India VIX, except MCIR. Besides, the findings reveal no significant response of India VIX during one day before the scheduled news announcements. This is due to the fact that India VIX market is more uncertain before the declaration of the results of MCIR convention of RBI, Export, Import, Fiscal Deficit, GDP, IIP and Inflation (CPI/WPI). The study shows that investors do not need to consider the scheduled macroeconomic announcement except MCIR meeting day and one day after in the valuation of options pricing or financial planning.

How do OPEC news and structural breaks impact returns and volatility in crude oil markets? Further evidence from a long memory process

Since its formation, OPEC through its conference decisions has been a major player in the world oil markets. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of OPEC's different news announcements on the conditional expectations and volatility of crude oil markets in the presence of long memory and structural changes. To do so, we first discern OPEC's oil production behavior in response to its “cut”, “maintain”, and “increase” decisions. Then by applying the ARMA–GARCH class models to the two global benchmarks WTI and Brent over the period May 1987 through December 2012, we find strong evidence of long memory. The empirical evidence also shows that OPEC's announcements especially the “cut” and the “maintain” decisions have a significant effect on both returns and volatility of the crude oil markets, particularly that of the WTI. Moreover, we explore the possibility of structural breaks in the crude oil prices and detect five (six) breakpoints for the WTI (Brent) oil markets. The presence of structural breaks reduces the persistence of volatility. Accounting for OPEC's scheduled news announcements in the presence of structural changes reduces the degree of volatility persistence and enhances the understanding of this volatility in the oil markets. These results have several implications for policy makers, oil traders and other participants in the crude oil markets.

Structural breaks and long memory in modeling and forecasting volatility of foreign exchange markets of oil exporters: The importance of scheduled and unscheduled news announcements

This paper analyzes the dual long memory properties of four major foreign exchange markets of the world oil exporter Saudi Arabia, using the ARFIMA–FIGARCH model under several global events. It discerns the impacts of both scheduled and unscheduled news announcements and structural changes on changing persistence. The results show little evidence of long memory in the conditional mean but provide strong support for long memory in conditional volatility for the four Saudi exchange rates versus major currencies. Moreover, scheduled news announcements have no significant impact on both expectations and volatility, while unscheduled news announcements demonstrate significant effects on the conditional volatility for all exchange rates. Furthermore, we detect at least five structural changes for the exchange rate with the yen and four for the rest of the exchange rates. The structural breaks seem to have greater impacts on changing persistence, and that the ARFIMA–FIGARCH model coupled with the dummy variables of the unscheduled news announcements and the structural changes is the most suitable for examining the long memory processes of these foreign exchange markets in in-sample. Finally, the out-of-sample forecasts provide mixed results and indicate that none of the specifications of the volatility model is appropriate for analyzing the LM dynamics in the Saudi Arabian exchange market. Overall, our results have implications for portfolio managers and policy makers in oil-producing countries.

Is there any common knowledge news in the Euro/Dollar market?

This paper analyzes the effect of nine categories of news announcements on the quoting activity of individual foreign exchange (FX) dealers on the Euro/Dollar exchange rate from May to October 2001. We use the double autoregressive conditional Poisson model (DACP), which is designed for time series of count data, which can be both under- or overdispersed. We find that dealers' quoting activity reacts differently to the same announcements, some increasing their activity, whilst others decrease it in response to the same news. Based on the taxonomy of Evans [Evans, M. (2002), Fx trading and exchange rate dynamics. Journal of Finance 57(6), 2405–2447.], we classify our news categories in two groups: common knowledge (CK) and non-common knowledge (NCK) news, according to their effects on quoting activity and price changes. Finally we show that scheduled news announcements are NCK news, and there is no evidence for the existence of CK news amongst our announcements, which means that dealers hardly get a consensus in interpreting the news content.

Intraday volatility in the Taipei FX market

This paper characterizes the volatility in the Taipei foreign exchange (FX) market based on a 4-year sample of 15-minute NTD (New Taiwan dollar)/USD exchange rates from 1996 through 1999. To identify the pattern of intraday volatility in NTD/USD exchange rate changes, the impacts of scheduled macroeconomic news releases in Taiwan and the U.S. are considered. In this paper, the periodic GARCH (P-GARCH) model and the dummy variable approach are combined together to capture the more complicated periodic structure of the intraday volatility in the NTD/USD exchange rate changes. The estimation results suggest that the doubly U-shaped pattern in the Taipei FX market, associated with separate morning and afternoon sessions due to a 2-hour lunch break, can only be partly explained by the scheduled news announcements.