IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/boe/boeewp/0871.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Informed trading in government bond markets

Author

Listed:
  • Czech, Robert

    (Bank of England)

  • Huang, Shiyang

    (University of Hong Kong)

  • Lou, Dong

    (London School of Economics and CEPR)

  • Wang, Tianyu

    (Tsinghua University)

Abstract

Using comprehensive regulatory data, we examine trading by different investor types in government bond markets. Our sample covers virtually all secondary market trading in gilts and contains detailed information on each transaction, including the identities of both counterparties. We find that hedge funds’ daily trading positively forecasts gilt returns in the following one to five days, which is then fully reversed in the following month. A part of this short-term return predictability is due to hedge funds’ ability to anticipate future demand of other investors. Mutual fund trading also positively predicts gilt returns, but over a longer horizon of one to two months. This return pattern does not revert in the following year and is partly due to mutual funds’ ability to forecast changes in short-term interest rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Czech, Robert & Huang, Shiyang & Lou, Dong & Wang, Tianyu, 2020. "Informed trading in government bond markets," Bank of England working papers 871, Bank of England.
    • Handle: RePEc:boe:boeewp:0871
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/working-paper/2020/informed-trading-in-government-bond-markets.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin D.D. Evans & Richard K. Lyons, 2017. "Order Flow and Exchange Rate Dynamics," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Studies in Foreign Exchange Economics, chapter 6, pages 247-290, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Maggio, Marco Di & Franzoni, Francesco & Kermani, Amir & Sommavilla, Carlo, 2019. "The relevance of broker networks for information diffusion in the stock market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(2), pages 419-446.
    3. repec:bla:jfinan:v:55:y:2000:i:4:p:1655-1703 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Jing-Zhi Huang & Ying Wang, 2014. "Timing Ability of Government Bond Fund Managers: Evidence from Portfolio Holdings," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(8), pages 2091-2109, August.
    5. Yong Chen & Zhi Da & Dayong Huang, 2019. "Arbitrage Trading: The Long and the Short of It," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(4), pages 1608-1646.
    6. 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.
    7. John C. Cox & Jonathan E. Ingersoll Jr. & Stephen A. Ross, 2005. "A Theory Of The Term Structure Of Interest Rates," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 5, pages 129-164, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Brown, Stephen J & Goetzmann, William N, 1995. "Performance Persistence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(2), pages 679-698, June.
    9. Randolph B. Cohen & Joshua D. Coval & Ľuboš Pástor, 2005. "Judging Fund Managers by the Company They Keep," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(3), pages 1057-1096, June.
    10. Grinblatt, Mark & Titman, Sheridan, 1992. "The Persistence of Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(5), pages 1977-1984, December.
    11. K. J. Martijn Cremers & Antti Petajisto, 2009. "How Active Is Your Fund Manager? A New Measure That Predicts Performance," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(9), pages 3329-3365, September.
    12. John H. Cochrane & Monika Piazzesi, 2005. "Bond Risk Premia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 138-160, March.
    13. Martijn Cremers & Antti Petajisto, 2006. "How Active is Your Fund Manager? A New Measure That Predicts Performance," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2370, Yale School of Management, revised 01 May 2009.
    14. Chordia, Tarun & Roll, Richard & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2002. "Order imbalance, liquidity, and market returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 111-130, July.
    15. Michael J. Fleming & Eli M. Remolona, 1997. "What moves the bond market?," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, vol. 3(Dec), pages 31-50.
    16. Coval, Joshua & Stafford, Erik, 2007. "Asset fire sales (and purchases) in equity markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 479-512, November.
    17. Dong Lou, 2012. "A Flow-Based Explanation for Return Predictability," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(12), pages 3457-3489.
    18. Vasicek, Oldrich, 1977. "An equilibrium characterization of the term structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 177-188, November.
    19. Gergana Jostova & Stanislava Nikolova & Alexander Philipov & Christof W. Stahel, 2013. "Momentum in Corporate Bond Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(7), pages 1649-1693.
    20. Sydney C. Ludvigson & Serena Ng, 2009. "Macro Factors in Bond Risk Premia," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(12), pages 5027-5067, December.
    21. Amihud, Yakov, 2002. "Illiquidity and stock returns: cross-section and time-series effects," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 31-56, January.
    22. John Y. Campbell & Robert J. Shiller, 1991. "Yield Spreads and Interest Rate Movements: A Bird's Eye View," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(3), pages 495-514.
    23. Diebold, Francis X. & Li, Canlin, 2006. "Forecasting the term structure of government bond yields," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 130(2), pages 337-364, February.
    24. Balduzzi, Pierluigi & Elton, Edwin J. & Green, T. Clifton, 2001. "Economic News and Bond Prices: Evidence from the U.S. Treasury Market," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(4), pages 523-543, December.
    25. Valseth, Siri, 2013. "Price discovery in government bond markets," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 127-151.
    26. Cici, Gjergji & Gibson, Scott, 2012. "The Performance of Corporate Bond Mutual Funds: Evidence Based on Security-Level Holdings," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(1), pages 159-178, February.
    27. Andersen, Torben G. & Bollerslev, Tim & Diebold, Francis X. & Vega, Clara, 2007. "Real-time price discovery in global stock, bond and foreign exchange markets," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 251-277, November.
    28. Lukas Menkhoff & Lucio Sarno & Maik Schmeling & Andreas Schrimpf, 2016. "Information Flows in Foreign Exchange Markets: Dissecting Customer Currency Trades," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(2), pages 601-634, April.
    29. Kyle, Albert S, 1985. "Continuous Auctions and Insider Trading," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1315-1335, November.
    30. Péter Kondor & Gábor Pintér, 2022. "Clients' Connections: Measuring the Role of Private Information in Decentralized Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(1), pages 505-544, February.
    31. Savor, Pavel & Wilson, Mungo, 2014. "Asset pricing: A tale of two days," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 171-201.
    32. Eric T. Swanson & John C. Williams, 2014. "Measuring the Effect of the Zero Lower Bound on Medium- and Longer-Term Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(10), pages 3154-3185, October.
    33. Paolo Pasquariello & Clara Vega, 2007. "Informed and Strategic Order Flow in the Bond Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(6), pages 1975-2019, November.
    34. Guillermo Llorente & Roni Michaely & Gideon Saar & Jiang Wang, 2002. "Dynamic Volume-Return Relation of Individual Stocks," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(4), pages 1005-1047.
    35. Russ Wermers, 2000. "Mutual Fund Performance: An Empirical Decomposition into Stock‐Picking Talent, Style, Transactions Costs, and Expenses," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1655-1695, August.
    36. Cai, Fang & Han, Song & Li, Dan & Li, Yi, 2019. "Institutional herding and its price impact: Evidence from the corporate bond market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1), pages 139-167.
    37. Vincent Van Kervel & Albert J. Menkveld, 2019. "High‐Frequency Trading around Large Institutional Orders," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(3), pages 1091-1137, June.
    38. Eguren-Martin, Fernando & McLaren, Nick, 2015. "How much do UK market interest rates respond to macroeconomic data news?," Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, Bank of England, vol. 55(3), pages 259-272.
    39. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    40. Bai, Jennie & Bali, Turan G. & Wen, Quan, 2019. "Common risk factors in the cross-section of corporate bond returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(3), pages 619-642.
    41. Jennifer Huang & Clemens Sialm & Hanjiang Zhang, 2011. "Risk Shifting and Mutual Fund Performance," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(8), pages 2575-2616.
    42. Nicolas P. B. Bollen, 2005. "Short-Term Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(2), pages 569-597.
    43. Marcin Kacperczyk & Clemens Sialm & Lu Zheng, 2005. "On the Industry Concentration of Actively Managed Equity Mutual Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(4), pages 1983-2011, August.
    44. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:3:p:1201-1234 is not listed on IDEAS
    45. Ekkehart Boehmer & Juan (Julie) Wu, 2013. "Short Selling and the Price Discovery Process," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(2), pages 287-322.
    46. Martijn Cremers & Antti Petajisto, 2006. "How Active is Your Fund Manager? A New Measure That Predicts Performance," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2370, Yale School of Management, revised 01 May 2009.
    47. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Stefan Nagel & Lasse H. Pedersen, 2009. "Carry Trades and Currency Crashes," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2008, Volume 23, pages 313-347, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    48. Vasicek, Oldrich Alfonso, 1977. "Abstract: An Equilibrium Characterization of the Term Structure," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(4), pages 627-627, November.
    49. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:6:p:2623-2654 is not listed on IDEAS
    50. Jiao, Yawen & Massa, Massimo & Zhang, Hong, 2016. "Short selling meets hedge fund 13F: An anatomy of informed demand," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 544-567.
    51. Terrence Hendershott & Charles M. Jones & Albert J. Menkveld, 2011. "Does Algorithmic Trading Improve Liquidity?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(1), pages 1-33, February.
    52. repec:oup:rfinst:v:25:y::i:12:p:3457-3489 is not listed on IDEAS
    53. Fama, Eugene F & Bliss, Robert R, 1987. "The Information in Long-Maturity Forward Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 680-692, September.
    54. Hendricks, Darryll & Patel, Jayendu & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1993. "Hot Hands in Mutual Funds: Short-Run Persistence of Relative Performance, 1974-1988," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 93-130, March.
    55. Michael J. Fleming & Eli M. Remolona, 1999. "Price Formation and Liquidity in the U.S. Treasury Market: The Response to Public Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(5), pages 1901-1915, 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. Di Gangi, Domenico & Lazarov, Vladimir & Mankodi, Aakash & Silvestri, Laura, 2022. "Links between government bond and futures markets: dealer-client relationships and price discovery in the UK," Bank of England working papers 991, Bank of England.
    2. Czech, Robert & Huang, Shiyang & Lou, Dong & Wang, Tianyu, 2021. "An unintended consequence of holding dollar assets," Bank of England working papers 953, Bank of England.
    3. Gabor Pinter & Chaojun Wang & Junyuan Zou, 2024. "Size Discount and Size Penalty: Trading Costs in Bond Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 37(7), pages 2156-2190.
    4. Czech, Robert & Pintér, Gábor, 2020. "Informed trading and the dynamics of client-dealer connections in corporate bond markets," Bank of England working papers 895, Bank of England, revised 20 Jan 2022.
    5. Kerssenfischer, Mark & Helmus, Caspar, 2024. "Outages in sovereign bond markets," Working Paper Series 2944, European Central Bank.
    6. Péter Kondor & Gábor Pintér, 2022. "Clients' Connections: Measuring the Role of Private Information in Decentralized Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(1), pages 505-544, February.
    7. Pinter, Gabor & Uslu, Semih, 2023. "Price formation in markets with trading delays," Bank of England working papers 1023, Bank of England.
    8. de Roure, Calebe & Mönch, Emanuel & Pelizzon, Loriana & Schneider, Michael, 2019. "OTC discount," Discussion Papers 42/2019, Deutsche Bundesbank.
      • de Roure, Calebe & Mönch, Emanuel & Pelizzon, Loriana & Schneider, Michael, 2021. "OTC discount," SAFE Working Paper Series 298, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2021.
    9. Bidder, Rhys & Coen, Jamie & Lepore, Caterina & Silvestri, Laura, 2024. "Whose asset sales matter?," Bank of England working papers 1088, Bank of England.
    10. Pinter, Gabor & Uslu, Semih, 2022. "Comparing search and intermediation frictions across markets," Bank of England working papers 974, Bank of England.
    11. Abudy, Menachem Meni & Nathan, Daniel & Wohl, Avi, 2024. "Mutual fund flows and government bond returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    12. Cunfei Liao & Guohao Tang & Xiaoying Xu, 2024. "Smart money or chasing stars: Evidence from northbound trading in China," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(2), pages 1781-1803, April.
    13. Pintér, Gábor & Wang, Chaojun & Zou, Junyuan, 2022. "Information chasing versus adverse selection," Bank of England working papers 971, Bank of England.
    14. Coen, Jamie & Coen, Patrick & Hüser, Anne-Caroline, 2024. "Collateral demand in wholesale funding markets," Bank of England working papers 1082, Bank of England.

    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. Lou, Dong, 2020. "Informed Trading in Government Bond Markets," CEPR Discussion Papers 15028, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Li, Zhiyong & Rao, Xiao, 2023. "Exploring the zoo of predictors for mutual fund performance in China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    3. Bessler, Wolfgang & Blake, David & Lückoff, Peter & Tonks, Ian, 2010. "Why does mutual fund performance not persist? The impact and interaction of fund flows and manager changes," MPRA Paper 34185, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Matallín-Sáez, Juan Carlos & Soler-Domínguez, Amparo & Tortosa-Ausina, Emili, 2016. "On the robustness of persistence in mutual fund performance," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 192-231.
    5. Agarwal, Vikas & Mullally, Kevin & Tang, Yuehua & Yang, Baozhong, 2013. "Mandatory portfolio disclosure, stock liquidity, and mutual fund performance," CFR Working Papers 13-04, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    6. Lee, John Byong-Tek & Ma, Jun & Margaritis, Dimitris & Yang, Wanyi, 2023. "Is anti-herding always a smart choice? Evidence from mutual funds," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    7. Andrew Koch, 2017. "Herd Behavior and Mutual Fund Performance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3849-3873, November.
    8. Agnesens, Julius, 2013. "A statistically robust decomposition of mutual fund performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 3867-3877.
    9. Gupta-Mukherjee, Swasti, 2013. "When active fund managers deviate from their peers: Implications for fund performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 1286-1305.
    10. Andrea Flori & Fabrizio Lillo & Fabio Pammolli & Alessandro Spelta, 2021. "Better to stay apart: asset commonality, bipartite network centrality, and investment strategies," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 299(1), pages 177-213, April.
    11. Jing Xie, 2024. "Stock-Picking by Mutual Funds: Evidence from Trading in Family-Controlled Firms," Working Papers 202411, University of Macau, Faculty of Business Administration.
    12. Wolfgang Bessler & David Blake & Peter Lückoff & Ian Tonks, 2018. "Fund Flows, Manager Changes, and Performance Persistence [Does motivation matter when assessing trade performance? An analysis of mutual funds]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(5), pages 1911-1947.
    13. Angelidis, Timotheos & Giamouridis, Daniel & Tessaromatis, Nikolaos, 2013. "Revisiting mutual fund performance evaluation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 1759-1776.
    14. Guidolin, Massimo & Thornton, Daniel L., 2018. "Predictions of short-term rates and the expectations hypothesis," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 636-664.
    15. Moneta, Fabio, 2015. "Measuring bond mutual fund performance with portfolio characteristics," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 223-242.
    16. Dahm, Laura K. & Sorhage, Christoph, 2015. "Milk or wine: Mutual funds' (dis)economies of life," CFR Working Papers 15-05, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    17. Jiang, Hao & Verardo, Michela, 2013. "Does herding behavior reveal skill? An analysis of mutual fund performance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119034, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Scott Bennett & David R. Gallagher & Graham Harman & Geoffrey J. Warren & Yuki Xi, 2018. "A new perspective on performance persistence: evidence using portfolio holdings," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 58(1), pages 91-125, March.
    19. Péter Kondor & Gábor Pintér, 2022. "Clients' Connections: Measuring the Role of Private Information in Decentralized Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(1), pages 505-544, February.
    20. Yung, Julieta, 2021. "Can interest rate factors explain exchange rate fluctuations?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 34-56.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Government bonds; informed trading; return predictability; asset managers;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:boe:boeewp:0871. 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: Digital Media Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/boegvuk.html .

    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.