IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/2007-05.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Rounding and the impact of news: a simple test of market rationality

Author

Abstract

Certain prominent scheduled macroeconomic news releases contain a rounded number on the first page of the release that is widely cited by newswires and the press and a more precise number in the text of the release. The whole release comes out at once. We propose a simple test of whether markets are paying attention to the rounded or unrounded numbers by studying the high-frequency market reaction to such news announcements. In the case of inflation releases, we find evidence that markets systematically ignore some of the information in the unrounded number. This is most pronounced for core CPI, a prominent release for which the rounding in the headline number is large relative to the information content of the release.

Suggested Citation

  • Meredith J. Beechey & Jonathan H. Wright, 2007. "Rounding and the impact of news: a simple test of market rationality," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2007-05, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2007-05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2007/200705/200705abs.html
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2007/200705/200705pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pierluigi Balduzzi & Edwin J. Elton & T. Clifton Green, 1996. "Economic News and the Yield Curve: Evidence From the U.S. Treasury Market," New York University, Leonard N. Stern School Finance Department Working Paper Seires 96-13, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business-.
    2. Owen A. Lamont & Richard H. Thaler, 2003. "Can the Market Add and Subtract? Mispricing in Tech Stock Carve-outs," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(2), pages 227-268, April.
    3. 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.
    4. Veronesi, Pietro, 1999. "Stock Market Overreaction to Bad News in Good Times: A Rational Expectations Equilibrium Model," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(5), pages 975-1007.
    5. Christopher A. Sims, 2006. "Rational Inattention: Beyond the Linear-Quadratic Case," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 158-163, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Faust, Jon & Rogers, John H. & Wang, Shing-Yi B. & Wright, Jonathan H., 2007. "The high-frequency response of exchange rates and interest rates to macroeconomic announcements," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1051-1068, May.
    2. Torben G. Andersen & Tim Bollerslev & Francis X. Diebold & Clara Vega, 2003. "Micro Effects of Macro Announcements: Real-Time Price Discovery in Foreign Exchange," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 38-62, March.
    3. Marc Poitras, 2004. "The Impact of Macroeconomic Announcements on Stock Prices: In Search of State Dependence," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 70(3), pages 549-565, January.
    4. James Ming Chen, 2017. "Systematic Risk in the Macrocosm," Quantitative Perspectives on Behavioral Economics and Finance, in: Econophysics and Capital Asset Pricing, chapter 0, pages 239-274, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Payzan-LeNestour, Elise & Pradier, Lionnel & Putniņš, Tālis J., 2023. "Biased risk perceptions: Evidence from the laboratory and financial markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    6. Ana Lasaosa, 2007. "Learning the Rules of the New Game? Comparing the Reactions in Financial Markets to Announcements before and after the Bank of England's Operational Independence," Ekonomia, Cyprus Economic Society and University of Cyprus, vol. 10(1), pages 18-41, Summer.
    7. Albuquerque, Rui & Vega, Clara, 2006. "Asymmetric Information in the Stock Market: Economic News and Co-movement," CEPR Discussion Papers 5598, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Michael Ehrmann & Marcel Fratzscher & Roberto Rigobon, 2011. "Stocks, bonds, money markets and exchange rates: measuring international financial transmission," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(6), pages 948-974, September.
    9. Füss, Roland & Grabellus, Markus & Mager, Ferdinand & Stein, Michael, 2018. "Something in the air: Information density, news surprises, and price jumps," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 50-75.
    10. Tuysuz, Sukriye, 2007. "The asymmetric impact of macroeconomic announcements on U.S. Government bond rate level and volatility," MPRA Paper 5381, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. 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.
    12. Ghent, Andra, 2007. "Why do markets react badly to good news? Evidence from Fed Funds Futures," MPRA Paper 1708, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Campbell, Sean D. & Sharpe, Steven A., 2009. "Anchoring Bias in Consensus Forecasts and Its Effect on Market Prices," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(2), pages 369-390, April.
    14. Parker, John, 2007. "The Impact Of Economic News On Financial Markets," MPRA Paper 2675, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Shogbuyi, Abiodun & Steeley, James M., 2017. "The effect of quantitative easing on the variance and covariance of the UK and US equity markets," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 281-291.
    16. Hautsch, Nikolaus & Hess, Dieter & Müller, Christoph, 2012. "Price adjustment to news with uncertain precision," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 337-355.
    17. Cyril May & Greg Farrell & Jannie Rossouw, 2018. "Do Monetary Policy Announcements Affect Exchange Rate Returns and Volatility of Returns? Some Evidence from High‐Frequency Intra‐Day South African Data," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 86(3), pages 308-338, September.
    18. Imane El Ouadghiri & Valérie Mignon & Nicolas Boitout, 2016. "On the impact of macroeconomic news surprises on Treasury-bond returns," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 29-53, February.
    19. Martin D. D. Evans, 2005. "Where Are We Now? Real-Time Estimates of the Macroeconomy," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 1(2), September.
    20. Mizrach, Bruce & Neely, Christopher J., 2008. "Information shares in the US Treasury market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 1221-1233, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Financial markets;

    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:fip:fedgfe:2007-05. 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: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.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.