Tag: Government bonds

Why do government bond yields drift when news is on its way?

Danny Walker, Dong Lou, Gabor Pinter and Semih Üslü

Government bond yields tend to drift higher in the days before monetary policy or data news in the UK. Over the past two decades this tendency – which we label ‘pre-news drift’ – has pushed up on yields by 2 percentage points in total over that period. The drift concentrates in pre-news periods that coincide with the issuance of UK government bonds, which is more common than it used to be. Our analysis shows that dealers and hedge funds are reluctant to buy bonds when news is on its way, which pushes up yields. Pre-news drift could affect the signal monetary policy makers draw from market rates and it could have implications for the optimal timing of bond issuance. There are further details in an associated working paper.

Continue reading “Why do government bond yields drift when news is on its way?” →

Informed trading in government bond markets

Robert Czech, Shiyang Huang, Dong Lou and Tianyu Wang

Government bond yields serve as a benchmark for virtually all other rates in financial markets. But what factors drive these yields? One view is that yields only move notably when important news hit the market, for example monetary policy announcements. Others suspect that some investors have an information advantage due to their access to costly information (e.g. data providers) or more accurate interpretations of public information. In a recent paper, we show that two investor groups – hedge funds and mutual funds – have an information edge in the UK government bond (gilt) market, and that these two investor types operate through different trading strategies and over different horizons.

Continue reading “Informed trading in government bond markets” →