IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jmoncb/v41y2009i4p567-582.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Daily Changes in Fed Funds Futures Prices

Author

Listed:
  • JAMES D. HAMILTON

Abstract

This paper explores the properties of daily changes in the prices for near‐term fed funds futures contracts. The paper finds these contracts to be excellent predictors of the fed funds rate, and shows that the claim of a nonzero term premium in the short‐horizon contracts is more sensitive to outliers than previous research appears to have recognized. I find some statistically significant evidence of serial correlation in the daily changes, but this accounts for only a tiny part of the 1‐day movements and there is essentially zero predictability for horizons longer than 1 day. Settlement futures prices for each day appear to incorporate the information embodied in that day's term structure of longer‐horizon Treasury securities. Previous employment growth makes a statistically significant contribution to predicting futures price changes, though again this could only account for a tiny part of the daily variance. The paper concludes that futures prices provide a very useful measure of the daily changes in the market's expectation of near‐term changes in Fed policy.

Suggested Citation

  • James D. Hamilton, 2009. "Daily Changes in Fed Funds Futures Prices," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(4), pages 567-582, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:jmoncb:v:41:y:2009:i:4:p:567-582
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1538-4616.2009.00223.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1538-4616.2009.00223.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1538-4616.2009.00223.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gurkaynak, Refet S. & Sack, Brian T. & Swanson, Eric P., 2007. "Market-Based Measures of Monetary Policy Expectations," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 25, pages 201-212, April.
    2. James D. Hamilton, 2008. "Daily Monetary Policy Shocks and the Delayed Response of New Home Sales," NBER Working Papers 14223, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Nelson, Daniel B, 1991. "Conditional Heteroskedasticity in Asset Returns: A New Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(2), pages 347-370, March.
    4. Swanson, Eric T., 2006. "Have Increases in Federal Reserve Transparency Improved Private Sector Interest Rate Forecasts?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(3), pages 791-819, April.
    5. Kuttner, Kenneth N., 2001. "Monetary policy surprises and interest rates: Evidence from the Fed funds futures market," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 523-544, June.
    6. Joel T. Krueger & Kenneth N. Kuttner, 1996. "The Fed funds futures rate as a predictor of federal reserve policy," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(8), pages 865-879, December.
    7. Refet S Gürkaynak & Brian Sack & Eric Swanson, 2005. "Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words? The Response of Asset Prices to Monetary Policy Actions and Statements," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 1(1), May.
    8. John B. Carlson & Ben R. Craig & Patrick C. Higgins & William R. Melick, 2006. "FOMC communications and the predictability of near-term policy decisions," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Jun.
    9. Lange, Joe & Sack, Brian & Whitesell, William, 2003. "Anticipations of Monetary Policy in Financial Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 35(6), pages 889-909, December.
    10. Rudebusch, Glenn D, 1998. "Do Measures of Monetary Policy in a VAR Make Sense?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(4), pages 907-931, November.
    11. Brian Sack, 2004. "Extracting the Expected Path of Monetary Policy From Futures Rates," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(8), pages 733-754, August.
    12. William Poole & Robert Rasche, 2000. "Perfecting the Market's Knowledge of Monetary Policy," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 18(2), pages 255-298, December.
    13. Rudebusch, Glenn D, 1998. "Do Measures of Monetary Policy in a VAR Make Sense? A Reply," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(4), pages 943-948, November.
    14. Hamilton, James D., 2008. "Daily monetary policy shocks and new home sales," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(7), pages 1171-1190, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Puriya Abbassi & Dieter Nautz & Christian Offermanns, 2010. "Interest Rate Dynamics and Monetary Policy Implementation in Switzerland," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 146(I), pages 313-340, March.
    2. Gunda-Alexandra Detmers & Dieter Nautz, 2012. "The Information Content of Central Bank Interest Rate Projections: Evidence from New Zealand," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 88(282), pages 323-329, September.
    3. Carlo Altavilla & Raffaella Giacomini & Riccardo Costantini, 2014. "Bond Returns and Market Expectations," Journal of Financial Econometrics, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(4), pages 708-729.
    4. Christiane Baumeister, 2021. "Measuring Market Expectations," Working Papers 202163, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    5. Xuefan, Pan, 2023. "Analysing the response of U.S. financial market to the Federal Open Market Committee statements and minutes based on computational linguistic approaches," Warwick-Monash Economics Student Papers 43, Warwick Monash Economics Student Papers.
    6. Maryam Movahedifar & Hossein Hassani & Masoud Yarmohammadi & Mahdi Kalantari & Rangan Gupta, 2021. "A robust approach for outlier imputation: Singular Spectrum Decomposition," Working Papers 202164, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James D. Hamilton, 2009. "Daily Changes in Fed Funds Futures Prices," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(4), pages 567-582, June.
    2. Nicholas Taylor, 2010. "The Determinants of Future U.S. Monetary Policy: High‐Frequency Evidence," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(2‐3), pages 399-420, March.
    3. Gurkaynak, Refet S. & Sack, Brian T. & Swanson, Eric P., 2007. "Market-Based Measures of Monetary Policy Expectations," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 25, pages 201-212, April.
    4. Refet S. Gürkaynak, 2005. "Using federal funds futures contracts for monetary policy analysis," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2005-29, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. James D. Hamilton & Tatsuyoshi Okimoto, 2011. "Sources of variation in holding returns for fed funds futures contracts," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(3), pages 205-229, March.
    6. Kaminska, Iryna & Mumtaz, Haroon & Šustek, Roman, 2021. "Monetary policy surprises and their transmission through term premia and expected interest rates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 48-65.
    7. Dahlhaus, Tatjana & Vasishtha, Garima, 2021. "Reprint: Monetary policy news in the US: Effects on emerging market capital flows," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    8. Dahlhaus, Tatjana & Vasishtha, Garima, 2020. "Monetary policy news in the US: Effects on emerging market capital flows," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    9. Hamilton, James D., 2008. "Daily monetary policy shocks and new home sales," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(7), pages 1171-1190, October.
    10. Barakchian, S. Mahdi & Crowe, Christopher, 2013. "Monetary policy matters: Evidence from new shocks data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(8), pages 950-966.
    11. Mamun, Abdullah & Hassan, M. Kabir, 2014. "What explains the lack of monetary policy influence on bank holding companies?," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 227-235.
    12. Mark Gertler & Peter Karadi, 2015. "Monetary Policy Surprises, Credit Costs, and Economic Activity," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 44-76, January.
    13. Piazzesi, Monika & Swanson, Eric T., 2008. "Futures prices as risk-adjusted forecasts of monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(4), pages 677-691, May.
    14. Kenneth B. Petersen & Vladimir Pozdnyakov, 2008. "Predicting the Fed," Working papers 2008-07, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    15. Refet S. Gürkaynak & Andrew T. Levin & Eric T. Swanson, 2006. "Does inflation targeting anchor long-run inflation expectations? evidence from long-term bond yields in the U.S., U.K., and Sweden," Working Paper Series 2006-09, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    16. Refet S. Gürkaynak & Andrew T. Levin & Andrew N. Marder & Eric T. Swanson, 2007. "Inflation Targeting and the Anchoring of Inflation Expectations in the Western Hemisphere," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Frederic S. Miskin & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Se (ed.),Monetary Policy under Inflation Targeting, edition 1, volume 11, chapter 11, pages 415-465, Central Bank of Chile.
    17. Refet S. Gürkaynak & Brian Sack & Eric Swanson, 2005. "The Sensitivity of Long-Term Interest Rates to Economic News: Evidence and Implications for Macroeconomic Models," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 425-436, March.
    18. Daniel L. Thornton, 2014. "The identification of the response of interest rates to monetary policy actions using market-based measures of monetary policy shocks," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 66(1), pages 67-87, January.
    19. Don Bredin & Stuart Hyde & Dirk Nitzsche & Gerard O'Reilly, 2009. "European monetary policy surprises: the aggregate and sectoral stock market response," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(2), pages 156-171.
    20. James D. Hamilton, 2008. "Daily Monetary Policy Shocks and the Delayed Response of New Home Sales," NBER Working Papers 14223, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:jmoncb:v:41:y:2009:i:4:p:567-582. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0022-2879 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.