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Discussion Paper
The Global Dash for Cash in March 2020
The economic disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a global dash-for-cash as investors sold securities rapidly. This selling pressure occurred across advanced sovereign bond markets and caused a deterioration in market functioning, leading to a number of central bank actions. In this post, we highlight results from a recent paper in which we show that these disruptions occurred disproportionately in the U.S. Treasury market and offer explanations for why investors’ selling pressures were more pronounced and broad-based in this market than in other sovereign bond markets.
Report
The Global Dash for Cash: Why Sovereign Bond Market Functioning Varied across Jurisdictions in March 2020
As the economic disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic increased in March 2020, there was a global dash-for-cash by investors. This selling pressure occurred across advanced sovereign bond markets and caused a deterioration in market functioning, leading to central bank interventions. We show that these market disruptions occurred disproportionately in the U.S. Treasury market and were due to investors’ selling pressures being far more pronounced and broad-based. Furthermore, we assess differences in key drivers of the market disruptions across sovereign bond markets, based on an ...
How sensitive is the Treasury cash-futures basis trade to funding condition shifts?
The Treasury cash-futures basis trade, a very large, leveraged Treasury trade, has drawn scrutiny because unwinding positions amplified stress during the pandemic-era market shock of March 2020. With estimates suggesting the trade has since grown larger, attention is focused on how well it might weather future shocks.
How AI debt financing impacts duration supply and interest rates
Financing needs related to AI data center investments are likely to be large and persistent. While the overall economics of such investments remains a topic of much debate, the duration supply implications for U.S. interest rate markets have received less attention.
Journal Article
The Global Dash for Cash: Why Sovereign Bond Market Functioning Varied across Jurisdictions in March 2020
In March 2020, the economic disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a global dash for cash by investors. This selling pressure occurred across advanced-economy sovereign bond markets and caused a deterioration in market functioning, leading to central bank interventions. The authors show that these market disruptions occurred disproportionately in the U.S. Treasury market and were due to investors’ selling pressures being far more pronounced and broad-based. Furthermore, the authors assess differences in key drivers of the market disruptions across sovereign bond markets, ...
Working Paper
Term Funding Premium—Time Is Money After All
Term premium plays an important role in understanding the evolution of interest rates, and has even been the target of monetary policy when short-term rates were at or near an effective lower bound. It is commonly defined as the difference between a long-term interest rate and the geometric average of short-term rates over the same horizon, making it unobservable. While many approaches exist to estimate term premium, they treat term premium as the market’s price for bearing interest rate risk. Although such frameworks have sufficed historically, they cannot explain the premium embedded in ...