Search Results
Showing results 1 to 6 of approximately 6.
(refine search)
Report
Asset Pricing with Cohort-Based Trading in MBS Markets
Agency MBSs with diverse characteristics are traded in parallel through individualized specified pool (SP) contracts and standardized to-be-announced (TBA) contracts. This parallel trading environment generates distinctive effects on MBS pricing and trading: (1) Although cheapest-to-deliver (CTD) issues are present in TBA trading and absent from SP trading by design, MBS heterogeneity associated with CTD discounts affects SP returns positively, with the effect stronger for lower-value SPs; (2) High selling pressure amplifies the effects of MBS heterogeneity on SP returns; (3) Greater MBS ...
Working Paper
Defragmenting Markets: Evidence from Agency MBS
Agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have historically traded in separate forward markets. We study the consequences of this fragmentation, showing that market liquidity endogenously concentrated in Fannie Mae MBS, leading to higher issuance and trading volume, lower transaction costs, higher security prices, and a higher rate of return on securitization for Fannie Mae. We then analyze a change in market design – the Single Security Initiative – which consolidated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac MBS trading into a single market in June 2019. We find that ...
Newsletter
What’s the Potential Impact of Force Majeure Claims on Financial Stability?
This article examines the potential aggregate impact on financial stability of several bilateral force majeure claims filed at approximately the same time in one or more markets. One and a half years after the pandemic started, I take stock of the developments involving force majeure claims thus far, and conclude that the likelihood of these claims creating a systemic threat to financial stability is low.
Report
Defragmenting Markets: Evidence from Agency MBS
Agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have historically traded in separate forward markets. We study the consequences of this fragmentation, showing that market liquidity endogenously concentrated in Fannie Mae MBS, leading to higher issuance and trading volume, lower transaction costs, higher security prices, and a lower primary market cost of capital for Fannie Mae. We then analyze a change in market design—the Single Security Initiative—which consolidated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac MBS trading into a single market in June 2019. We find that ...
Report
Mortgage-Backed Securities
This paper reviews the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) market, with a particular emphasis on agency residential MBS in the United States. We discuss the institutional environment, security design, MBS risks and asset pricing, and the economic effects of mortgage securitization. We also assemble descriptive statistics about market size, growth, security characteristics, prepayment, and trading activity. Throughout, we highlight insights from the expanding body of academic research on the MBS market and mortgage securitization.
Report
Dealers and the Dealer of Last Resort: Evidence from the Agency MBS Markets in the COVID-19 Crisis
When market disruptions started in March 2020, dealers maintained the usual liquidity provision in the agency MBS market by taking cash inventory and hedging inventory risk with forward contracts. However, cash and forward prices significantly diverged and began to converge only after the Federal Reserve deployed nonstandard purchase operations to promptly take MBS off dealers’ balance sheets. Further cross-dealer analyses point to supplemental leverage ratio requirements as major constraints on dealers’ balance sheets. Customers’ selling increased when price divergence reverted, ...