This working paper evaluates the economic sources of the stock market responses of 40 countries to surprises in the fed funds rate (FFR), the Fed's forward guidance (FG) and large-scale asset purchases (LSAP). We decompose stock market returns into different components reflecting investors'...

We find that the FOMC-announcement-day return premium earned by a firm is positively related to the increase in its ex ante, option-implied skewness prior to the announcement. This finding is consistent with: (1) the existence of an announcement-day Fed put that is partially anticipated by the...

Discount rates affect stock prices directly via the discount-rate channel or indirectly via the cash-flow channel because expected future cash-flow growth varies with the discount rates. The traditional Macaulay duration captures the effect from the discount-rate channel. I propose a novel...