We study the effects of central bank communication about financial stability on individuals’ expectations and risk-taking. Using a randomized information experiment, we show that communication causally affects individuals’ beliefs and investment behavior, consistent with an expectations...

We examine howthe verbal complexity of ECB communications affectsfi-nancial market trading based on high-frequency data fromEuropean stock index futures trading. Studying the 34 events between May 2009 and June 2017, during which the ECB Governing Council press conferences covered unconventional...

Uncertainty and monetary policy decisions in the U.S. interact with one another. Contrary to the common notion that FOMC announcements resolve a non-trivial amount of economic uncertainty, we find that the announcement commands a sizable left-tail premium, which builds up a few days in advance....

A large literature uses high-frequency changes in interest rates around FOMC announcements to study monetary policy. These yield changes have puzzlingly low explanatory power for the stock market - even in a narrow 30-minute window. We propose a new approach to test whether the unexplained...

The slope factor is constructed from changes in federal funds futures of different horizons and predicts stock returns at the weekly frequency: faster policy easing positively predicts returns. It contains information about the speed of future monetary policy tightening and loosening, and...

We construct a slope factor from changes in federal funds futures of different horizons. A positive slope signals faster monetary policy tightening and predicts negative excess returns at the weekly frequency. Investors can achieve increases in weekly Sharpe ratios of 20% conditioning on the...

In this paper, we provide evidence on the response of stock market returns to monetary policy shocks but condition the analysis on both the direction of monetary policy surprises and business conditions. We follow a two-step approach: First, we use an structural vector autoregressive (SVAR)...

We show that firm liability structure and associated cash flow matter for firm behavior, and that financial market participants price stocks accordingly. Looking at firm level stock price changes around monetary policy announcements, we find that firms that have more cash flow exposure see their...