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Decoding Equity Market Reactions to Macroeconomic News

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Abstract

The equity market’s reaction to macroeconomic news is consistent with the propagation of news into the real economy. We embody all the macro news in an activity news index and a price news index that together explain 34% of the quarterly stock price returns variation. When those indexes capture a stream of favorable macroeconomic surprises, publicly traded firms experience increases in revenues, profitability, financing, and investment activities. The firm-level resultslead up to an expansion of the real side of the whole U.S. economy. Our findings, taken together, show that stock prices’ reactions to macro news have a strong association with firm-level and economy-wide growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Michele Modugno & Berardino Palazzo, 2025. "Decoding Equity Market Reactions to Macroeconomic News," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2025-007, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2025-07
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2025.007
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    1. Altavilla, Carlo & Giannone, Domenico & Modugno, Michele, 2017. "Low frequency effects of macroeconomic news on government bond yields," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 31-46.
    2. Bu, Chunya & Rogers, John & Wu, Wenbin, 2021. "A unified measure of Fed monetary policy shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 331-349.
    3. David H. Cutler & James M. Poterba & Lawrence H. Summers, 1988. "What Moves Stock Prices?," Working papers 487, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    4. 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.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Macroeconomic News; Equity Markets; Real Activity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • E47 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

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