[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jfinec/v12y2014i4p708-729..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bond Returns and Market Expectations

Author

Listed:
  • Carlo Altavilla
  • Raffaella Giacomini
  • Riccardo Costantini
Abstract
A well-documented empirical result is that market expectations extracted from futures contracts on the federal funds rate are among the best predictors for the future course of monetary policy. We show how this information can be exploited to produce accurate forecasts of bond excess returns and to construct profitable investment strategies in bond markets. We use an exponential tilting method for incorporating market expectations into forecasts from a standard term-structure model and then derive the implied forecasts for bond excess returns. We find that the method delivers substantial improvements in out-of-sample accuracy relative to a number of benchmarks. The accuracy improvements are both statistically and economically significant for bond maturities of up to two years and forecast horizons less than one year, and would have allowed an investor to obtain positive cumulative excess returns from simple "riding the yield curve" investment strategies over the past ten years. For long forecast horizons and bond maturities of four or five years, the preferred forecast is instead one implied by a simple autoregressive model.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jfinec:v:12:y:2014:i:4:p:708-729.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jjfinec/nbu012
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ben S. Bernanke & Kenneth N. Kuttner, 2005. "What Explains the Stock Market's Reaction to Federal Reserve Policy?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(3), pages 1221-1257, June.
    2. Della Corte, Pasquale & Sarno, Lucio & Thornton, Daniel L., 2008. "The expectation hypothesis of the term structure of very short-term rates: Statistical tests and economic value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 158-174, July.
    3. Ilan Cooper, 2009. "Time-Varying Risk Premiums and the Output Gap," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(7), pages 2601-2633, July.
    4. Hordahl, Peter & Tristani, Oreste & Vestin, David, 2006. "A joint econometric model of macroeconomic and term-structure dynamics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1-2), pages 405-444.
    5. Marquering, Wessel & Verbeek, Marno, 2004. "The Economic Value of Predicting Stock Index Returns and Volatility," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(2), pages 407-429, June.
    6. Robertson, John C & Tallman, Ellis W & Whiteman, Charles H, 2005. "Forecasting Using Relative Entropy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(3), pages 383-401, June.
    7. Laura Coroneo & Domenico Giannone & Michele Modugno, 2016. "Unspanned Macroeconomic Factors in the Yield Curve," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(3), pages 472-485, July.
    8. J. Benson Durham, 2003. "Estimates of the term premium on near-dated federal funds futures contracts," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2003-19, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    9. 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.
    10. Daniel L. Thornton & Giorgio Valente, 2012. "Out-of-Sample Predictions of Bond Excess Returns and Forward Rates: An Asset Allocation Perspective," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(10), pages 3141-3168.
    11. 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.
    12. Pesaran, M Hashem & Timmermann, Allan, 1992. "A Simple Nonparametric Test of Predictive Performance," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 10(4), pages 561-565, October.
    13. 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.
    14. 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.
    15. 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.
    16. Diebold, Francis X & Mariano, Roberto S, 2002. "Comparing Predictive Accuracy," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 134-144, January.
    17. Bikbov, Ruslan & Chernov, Mikhail, 2010. "No-arbitrage macroeconomic determinants of the yield curve," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 159(1), pages 166-182, November.
    18. Glenn D. Rudebusch & Tao Wu, 2008. "A Macro‐Finance Model of the Term Structure, Monetary Policy and the Economy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(530), pages 906-926, July.
    19. Jeff Fleming & Chris Kirby & Barbara Ostdiek, 2001. "The Economic Value of Volatility Timing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(1), pages 329-352, February.
    20. Dewachter, Hans & Lyrio, Marco, 2006. "Macro Factors and the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(1), pages 119-140, February.
    21. John H. Cochrane & Monika Piazzesi, 2005. "Bond Risk Premia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 138-160, March.
    22. Amisano, Gianni & Giacomini, Raffaella, 2007. "Comparing Density Forecasts via Weighted Likelihood Ratio Tests," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 25, pages 177-190, April.
    23. 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.
    24. Andrew Ang & Sen Dong & Monika Piazzesi, 2005. "No-arbitrage Taylor rules," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    25. Pasquale Della Corte & Lucio Sarno & Ilias Tsiakas, 2009. "An Economic Evaluation of Empirical Exchange Rate Models," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(9), pages 3491-3530, September.
    26. Wu, Tao, 2006. "Macro Factors and the Affine Term Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(7), pages 1847-1875, October.
    27. Lars E.O. Svensson, 1994. "Estimating and Interpreting Forward Interest Rates: Sweden 1992 - 1994," NBER Working Papers 4871, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    28. repec:hal:journl:peer-00732517 is not listed on IDEAS
    29. Ang, Andrew & Piazzesi, Monika, 2003. "A no-arbitrage vector autoregression of term structure dynamics with macroeconomic and latent variables," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 745-787, May.
    30. 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.
    31. 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.
    32. 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.
    33. 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.
    34. Gregory R. Duffee, 2011. "Information in (and not in) the Term Structure," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(9), pages 2895-2934.
    35. Ulf Söderström, 2001. "Predicting monetary policy with federal funds futures prices," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(4), pages 377-391, April.
    36. 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.
    37. Diebold, Francis X. & Rudebusch, Glenn D. & Borag[caron]an Aruoba, S., 2006. "The macroeconomy and the yield curve: a dynamic latent factor approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1-2), pages 309-338.
    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. Konstantinos Metaxoglou & Davide Pettenuzzo & Aaron Smith, 2019. "Option-Implied Equity Premium Predictions via Entropic Tilting," Journal of Financial Econometrics, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(4), pages 559-586.
    2. Antonio Gargano & Davide Pettenuzzo & Allan Timmermann, 2019. "Bond Return Predictability: Economic Value and Links to the Macroeconomy," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(2), pages 508-540, February.
    3. Fausto Vieira & Fernando Chague, Marcelo Fernandes, 2016. "A dynamic Nelson-Siegel model with forward-looking indicators for the yield curve in the US," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2016_31, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    4. Raffaella Giacomini, 2015. "Economic theory and forecasting: lessons from the literature," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 18(2), pages 22-41, June.
    5. Vieira, Fausto & Fernandes, Marcelo & Chague, Fernando, 2017. "Forecasting the Brazilian yield curve using forward-looking variables," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 121-131.
    6. Christiane Baumeister, 2021. "Measuring Market Expectations," Working Papers 202163, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    7. Raffaella Giacomini, 2014. "Economic theory and forecasting: lessons from the literature," CeMMAP working papers 41/14, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    8. Gonzalo Cortazar & Cristobal Millard & Hector Ortega & Eduardo S. Schwartz, 2019. "Commodity Price Forecasts, Futures Prices, and Pricing Models," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(9), pages 4141-4155, September.
    9. Cristiano Salvagnin & Aldo Glielmo & Maria Elena De Giuli & Antonietta Mira, 2024. "Investigating the price determinants of the European Emission Trading System: a non-parametric approach," Papers 2406.05094, arXiv.org.
    10. 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.
    11. Eriksen, Jonas N., 2017. "Expected Business Conditions and Bond Risk Premia," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(4), pages 1667-1703, August.
    12. Fernandes, Marcelo & Vieira, Fausto, 2019. "A dynamic Nelson–Siegel model with forward-looking macroeconomic factors for the yield curve in the US," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 1-1.

    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. P. Byrne, Joseph & Cao, Shuo & Korobilis, Dimitris, 2015. "Term Structure Dynamics, Macro-Finance Factors and Model Uncertainty," SIRE Discussion Papers 2015-71, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    4. Rui Liu, 2019. "Forecasting Bond Risk Premia with Unspanned Macroeconomic Information," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 9(01), pages 1-62, March.
    5. Doshi, Hitesh & Jacobs, Kris & Liu, Rui, 2018. "Macroeconomic determinants of the term structure: Long-run and short-run dynamics," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 99-122.
    6. Michael D. Bauer & Glenn D. Rudebusch, 2020. "Interest Rates under Falling Stars," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(5), pages 1316-1354, May.
    7. Schmeling, Maik & Schrimpf, Andreas & Steffensen, Sigurd A.M., 2022. "Monetary policy expectation errors," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(3), pages 841-858.
    8. Carlo A. Favero & Arie E. Gozluklu & Haoxi Yang, 2016. "Demographics and the Behavior of Interest Rates," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 64(4), pages 732-776, November.
    9. Antonio Gargano & Davide Pettenuzzo & Allan Timmermann, 2019. "Bond Return Predictability: Economic Value and Links to the Macroeconomy," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(2), pages 508-540, February.
    10. 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.
    11. Michael D. Bauer & James D. Hamilton, 2018. "Robust Bond Risk Premia," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(2), pages 399-448.
    12. Michiel De Pooter & Francesco Ravazzolo & Dick van Dijk, 2010. "Term structure forecasting using macro factors and forecast combination," International Finance Discussion Papers 993, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    13. De Pooter, Michiel & Ravazzolo, Francesco & van Dijk, Dick, 2006. "Predicting the term structure of interest rates incorporating parameter uncertainty, model uncertainty and macroeconomic information," MPRA Paper 2512, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 03 Mar 2007.
    14. Duffee, Gregory R., 2013. "Bond Pricing and the Macroeconomy," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 907-967, Elsevier.
    15. P. Byrne, Joseph & Cao, Shuo & Korobilis, Dimitris, 2015. "Term Structure Dynamics, Macro-Finance Factors and Model Uncertainty," 2007 Annual Meeting, July 29-August 1, 2007, Portland, Oregon TN 2015-71, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    16. Carlo Altavilla & Raffaella Giacomini & Giuseppe Ragusa, 2017. "Anchoring the yield curve using survey expectations," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(6), pages 1055-1068, September.
    17. Massimo Guidolin & Manuela Pedio, 2019. "Forecasting and Trading Monetary Policy Effects on the Riskless Yield Curve with Regime Switching Nelson†Siegel Models," Working Papers 639, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    18. Glenn D. Rudebusch & Eric T. Swanson & Tao Wu, 2006. "The Bond Yield "Conundrum" from a Macro-Finance Perspective," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 24(S1), pages 83-109, December.
    19. Daniel Borup & Jonas N. Eriksen & Mads M. Kjær & Martin Thyrsgaard, 2024. "Predicting Bond Return Predictability," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(2), pages 931-951, February.
    20. Guidolin, Massimo & Timmermann, Allan, 2009. "Forecasts of US short-term interest rates: A flexible forecast combination approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 150(2), pages 297-311, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • E4 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates
    • C5 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling

    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:oup:jfinec:v:12:y:2014:i:4:p:708-729.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sofieea.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.