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Discussion Paper
Introduction to a Series on Market Liquidity
Market participants and policymakers have recently raised concerns about market liquidity?the ability to buy and sell securities quickly, at any time, at minimal cost. Market liquidity supports the efficient allocation of capital through financial markets, which is a catalyst for sustainable economic growth. Changes in market liquidity, whether due to regulation, changes in market structure, or otherwise, are therefore of great interest to policymakers and market participants alike.
Discussion Paper
Intermediary Leverage Cycles and Financial Stability
The financial crisis of 2007-09 highlighted the central role that financial intermediaries play in the propagation and amplification of shocks. Intermediaries increase leverage during the boom, which then makes them more vulnerable to adverse economic developments. In this post, we review evidence on the balance-sheet behavior of financial intermediaries and describe a channel that allows intermediaries to increase leverage during booms when asset market volatility tends to be low, which in turn forces them to dramatically reduce leverage once volatility increases. As shown during the ...
Discussion Paper
What’s Your WAM? Taking Stock of Dealers’ Funding Durability
One of the lessons from the recent financial crisis is the need for securities dealers to have durable sources of funding. As evidenced by the demise of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, during times of stress, cash lenders may pull away from firms or funding markets more broadly. Lengthening the tenor of secured funding is one way for a dealer to mitigate the risk of losing funding when market conditions are strained. In this post, we use clearing bank tri-party repo data to examine the degree to which dealers are lengthening the maturities of their sources of funding. (Aggregate statistics ...
Discussion Paper
Measuring Settlement Fails
In June 2014, settlement fails of U.S. Treasury securities reached their highest level since the implementation of the Treasury fails charge in May 2009, attracting significant attention from market participants. In this post, we review what fails are, why they are of interest, and how they can be measured. In a companion post following this one, we evaluate the particular circumstances of the June 2014 fails.
Discussion Paper
At the N.Y. Fed: Workshop on the Risks of Wholesale Funding
The Federal Reserve Banks of Boston and New York recently cosponsored a workshop on the risks of wholesale funding. Wholesale funding refers to firm financing via deposits and other liabilities from pension funds, money market mutual funds, and other financial intermediaries. Compared with stable retail funding, the supply of wholesale funding is volatile, especially during financial crises. For instance, when a firm relies on short-term wholesale funds to support long-term illiquid assets, it becomes vulnerable to runs by its wholesale creditors, as seen during the recent financial crisis. ...
Discussion Paper
What Explains the June Spike in Treasury Settlement Fails?
In June of this year?as we noted in the preceding post?settlement fails in U.S. Treasury securities spiked to their highest level since the implementation of the fails charge in May 2009. Our first post reviewed what fails are, why they arise, and how they can be measured. In this post, we dig into the fails data to identify possible explanations for the high level of fails in June. We observe that sequential fails of several benchmark securities accounted for the lion?s share of fails in June, but that fails in seasoned securities?which have been trending upward for some time?were also ...
Discussion Paper
Hybrid Intermediaries
A successful hybrid is an offspring of two species that, in a new environment, is better suited for survival than its own parents. Evolution in the financial ?ecosystem? seems to have driven the emergence of hybrid intermediaries.
Discussion Paper
How Liquidity Standards Can Improve Lending of Last Resort Policies
Prior to the Great Recession, the focus of bank regulation was on bank capital with little consensus about the need for liquidity regulation. This view was in contrast with an existing body of academic research that pointed to inefficiencies in environments with strictly private provision of liquidity, via either interbank markets or credit line agreements. In spite of theoretical results pointing to the possible benefits of liquidity regulation for reducing fire sales in crises or the risk of panics due to coordination failures, a common view was that its costs might exceed its benefits, ...
Discussion Paper
Are Higher Haircuts Better? A Paradox
Repurchase agreement (repo) markets played an important role in the 2007-09 financial crisis in the United States, and much discussion since then has focused on the role of repo haircuts. A repo is essentially a loan collateralized by securities. Typically, the value of the securities exceeds the value of the loan and the amount of overcollateralization corresponds to the haircut. In a 2010 paper, Yale?s Gary Gorton and Andy Metrick identified a dramatic increase in haircuts in the bilateral segment of the repo market, which they interpreted as a run on repo. Separately, an industry task ...
Discussion Paper
Dealer Balance Sheet Capacity and Market Liquidity during the 2013 Selloff in Fixed-Income Markets
Long-term interest rates hit record-low levels in 2012 but have since increased substantially. As discussed in an earlier post, the sharpest increase occurred between May 2 and July 5 of this year, with the ten-year Treasury yield rising from 1.63 percent to 2.74 percent. During the May-July episode, market liquidity also deteriorated. Some market participants have suggested that constraints on dealer balance sheet capacity impaired liquidity during the selloff, amplifying the magnitude and speed of the rise in interest rates and volatility. In this post, we review the evolution of Treasury ...