Price formation and liquidity in the U.S. treasuries market: evidence from intraday patterns around announcements

We find striking intraday adjustment patterns for price volatility, trading volume, and bid-ask spreads in the U.S. Treasuries market around the time of macroeconomic announcements. The patterns suggest certain hypotheses about price formation and liquidity provision in multiple-dealer markets. These hypotheses assign new importance to public information, heterogeneous views, sluggish price discovery, traditional inventory-control behavior by market makers, and liquidity traders who react with a lag to price changes.