IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/15736.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sources of Variation in Holding Returns for Fed Funds Futures Contracts

Author

Listed:
  • James D. Hamilton
  • Tatsuyoshi Okimoto

Abstract

This paper relates predictable gains from positions in fed funds futures contracts to violations of the expectations hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates. Although evidence for predictable gains from positions in short-horizon contracts is mixed, we find that gains in longer horizon contracts can be well described using Markov-switching models, with predictability associated with particular episodes in which economic activity was weak and variability in the returns to these contracts was quite high.

Suggested Citation

  • James D. Hamilton & Tatsuyoshi Okimoto, 2010. "Sources of Variation in Holding Returns for Fed Funds Futures Contracts," NBER Working Papers 15736, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15736
    Note: ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15736.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giuseppe Ferrero & Andrea Nobili, 2009. "Futures Contract Rates as Monetary Policy Forecasts," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 5(2), pages 109-145, June.
    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. 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.
    4. Andrew Ang & Geert Bekaert & Min Wei, 2008. "The Term Structure of Real Rates and Expected Inflation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(2), pages 797-849, April.
    5. Garcia, Rene & Perron, Pierre, 1996. "An Analysis of the Real Interest Rate under Regime Shifts," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(1), pages 111-125, February.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. Clark, Todd E. & West, Kenneth D., 2007. "Approximately normal tests for equal predictive accuracy in nested models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 291-311, May.
    9. Engel, Charles & Hamilton, James D, 1990. "Long Swings in the Dollar: Are They in the Data and Do Markets Know It?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(4), pages 689-713, September.
    10. Ang, Andrew & Bekaert, Geert, 2002. "Regime Switches in Interest Rates," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(2), pages 163-182, April.
    11. Hamilton, James D, 1989. "A New Approach to the Economic Analysis of Nonstationary Time Series and the Business Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 357-384, March.
    12. Smith, Aaron & Naik, Prasad A. & Tsai, Chih-Ling, 2006. "Markov-switching model selection using Kullback-Leibler divergence," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 134(2), pages 553-577, October.
    13. 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.
    14. Qiang Dai & Kenneth J. Singleton & Wei Yang, 2007. "Regime Shifts in a Dynamic Term Structure Model of U.S. Treasury Bond Yields," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(5), pages 1669-1706, 2007 12.
    15. Hamilton, James D., 1988. "Rational-expectations econometric analysis of changes in regime : An investigation of the term structure of interest rates," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 12(2-3), pages 385-423.
    16. 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.
    17. 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.
    18. Evans, Martin D. D. & Lewis, Karen K., 1994. "Do stationary risk premia explain it all?: Evidence from the term structure," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 285-318, April.
    19. Hamilton, James D., 2008. "Daily monetary policy shocks and new home sales," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(7), pages 1171-1190, October.
    20. Rudebusch, Glenn D., 1995. "Federal Reserve interest rate targeting, rational expectations, and the term structure," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 245-274, April.
    21. Christopher A. Sims & Tao Zha, 2006. "Were There Regime Switches in U.S. Monetary Policy?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 54-81, March.
    22. 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.
    23. Inoue, Tomoo & Okimoto, Tatsuyoshi, 2008. "Were there structural breaks in the effects of Japanese monetary policy? Re-evaluating policy effects of the lost decade," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 320-342, September.
    24. Brent Bundick, 2007. "Do federal funds futures need adjustment for excess returns? a state-dependent approach," Research Working Paper RWP 07-08, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    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. Hughes Hallett, Andrew & Rannenberg, Ansgar & Schreiber, Sven, 2014. "New Keynesian versus old Keynesian government spending multipliers: A comment," Discussion Papers 2014/6, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    2. Christiane Baumeister, 2021. "Measuring Market Expectations," Working Papers 202163, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    3. Dick van Dijk & Robin L. Lumsdaine & Michel van der Wel, 2014. "Market Set-Up in Advance of Federal Reserve Policy Decisions," NBER Working Papers 19814, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Andrew Hughes Hallett & Ansgar Rannenberg & Sven Schreiber, 2017. "Reassessing the Impact of the US Fiscal Stimulus: The Role of the Monetary Policy Stance," International Business Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 10(4), pages 12-31, April.
    5. Schmeling, Maik & Schrimpf, Andreas & Steffensen, Sigurd A.M., 2022. "Monetary policy expectation errors," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(3), pages 841-858.
    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.
    7. Jean-Sébastien Fontaine, 2012. "Estimating the Policy Rule from Money Market Rates when Target Rate Changes Are Lumpy," Staff Working Papers 12-41, Bank of Canada.

    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. Baumeister, Christiane, 2021. "Measuring Market Expectations," CEPR Discussion Papers 16520, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Andrew Ang & Allan Timmermann, 2012. "Regime Changes and Financial Markets," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 313-337, October.
    5. Lange, Ronald H., 2017. "The expected real yield and inflation components of the nominal yield curve," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 1-18.
    6. Sarno, Lucio & Thornton, Daniel L & Valente, Giorgio, 2005. "Federal Funds Rate Prediction," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(3), pages 449-471, June.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. Francesco Audrino & Kameliya Filipova, 2009. "Yield Curve Predictability, Regimes, and Macroeconomic Information: A Data-Driven Approach," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2009 2009-10, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
    10. 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.
    11. Martin D. D. Evans, 2003. "Real risk, inflation risk, and the term structure," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(487), pages 345-389, April.
    12. Constantino Hevia & Martín Sola & Ivan Petrella, 2022. "Bond risk premia, priced regime shifts, and macroeconomic fundamentals," Department of Economics Working Papers 2022_03, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.
    13. Qiang Dai & Kenneth J. Singleton & Wei Yang, 2007. "Regime Shifts in a Dynamic Term Structure Model of U.S. Treasury Bond Yields," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(5), pages 1669-1706, 2007 12.
    14. Schmeling, Maik & Schrimpf, Andreas & Steffensen, Sigurd A.M., 2022. "Monetary policy expectation errors," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(3), pages 841-858.
    15. Pérez Quirós, Gabriel & Sicilia, Jorge, 2002. "Is the European Central Bank (and the United States Federal Reserve) predictable?," Working Paper Series 192, European Central Bank.
    16. Yvon Fauvel & Alain Paquet & Christian Zimmermann, 1999. "A Survey on Interest Rate Forecasting," Cahiers de recherche CREFE / CREFE Working Papers 87, CREFE, Université du Québec à Montréal.
    17. 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.
    18. Refet S. Gürkaynak & Brian P. Sack & Eric T. Swanson, 2003. "The excess sensitivity of long-term interest rates: evidence and implications for macroeconomic models," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Mar.
    19. Kasahara, Hiroyuki & Shimotsu, Katsumi, 2019. "Asymptotic properties of the maximum likelihood estimator in regime switching econometric models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 208(2), pages 442-467.
    20. Ravi Bansal & Hao Zhou, 2002. "Term Structure of Interest Rates with Regime Shifts," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(5), pages 1997-2043, October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E40 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - General
    • E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General
    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing

    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:nbr:nberwo:15736. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.