A Critical Analysis of Volatility Surprise in Bitcoin Cryptocurrency and Other Financial Assets

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the viability as compared with other financial assets of cryptocurrencies as a currency or as an asset investment. This paper also aims to see which macro variable relates more to the price of cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin. Since the whole concept of cryptocurrencies is quite novel, an attempt has been made to briefly explain the underlying blockchain technology that forms the bedrock of cryptocurrencies. In this study, we use secondary data, i.e., the price history of Bitcoin from September 2014 to September 2021 for the last seven years, captured from trading exchanges. We predicted monthly returns of Bitcoin with that of Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (S&P 500), gold, and Treasury Bonds. Our findings show that Bitcoin has very high volatility compared to S&P 500, Gold and Treasury Bonds. Also, our findings show that there is a positive correlation between Bitcoin’s price volatility and the other three financial assets before and during COVID-19. Hence, Bitcoin is acting more as a speculative asset rather than a steady store of value. This can be drawn from the comparison with the debt market i.e., a Treasury Bond that invests in long-dated (30 years) US treasuries with which Bitcoin shows no relationship. The findings of this study could help with understanding the future of Bitcoin. This has important implications for Bitcoin investors. The current study contributes to the extant literature by providing empirical evidence on long-term social sustainability vis-à-vis supply chain traceability.

Non-Linear Impact of Chinese Treasury Bond Futures on the Information Content of IRS

This paper investigates the impact of Chinese Treasury bond (CTB) futures on the information content of interest rate swap (IRS) from a multifractality perspective. We first use multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA) method and show that the swap rate and the CTB yield exhibit strong multifractality. In addition, employing multifractal detrended cross-correlation analysis (MF-DCCA) method, we find that cross-correlations between the swap rate and the CTB yield are multifractally persistent. Moreover, after the reintroduction of Treasury bond futures, the persistence of cross-correlation between the series is weaker. Our results indicate that the information content of IRS decreased after the re-launch of CTB futures.

International Evidence on Extending Sovereign Debt Maturities

Portfolio diversification is as important to debt management as it is to asset management. In this paper, we focus on diversification of sovereign debt issuance by examining the extension of the maximum maturity of issued debt. In particular, we examine the potential costs to the U.S. Treasury of introducing 50-year bonds as a financing option. Based on evidence from foreign government bond markets with such long-term debt, our results suggest that a 50-year Treasury bond would likely trade at an average yield that is at most 20 basis points above that of a 30-year bond. Our results based on extrapolations from a dynamic yield curve model using just U.S. Treasury yields are similar.

Temporal measures of societal optimism reveal inversion of sentiment toward the near and distant future

Individuals can hold contrasting views about distinct times, e.g., dread over tomorrow’s appointment and excitement about next summer’s vacation. Yet, psychological measures of happiness and optimism often assess only one time-point. Taking inspiration from the Treasury bond yield curve, which compares bond yields by their date to maturity, we compare online sentiment about different future times. Using over 2.1M tweets that reference 23 points in the future (2 days-30 years), we calculate the monthly mean sentiment toward each time point and analyze how it differs across short-, medium-, and longer-term future references. We call this function the optimism curve, as it measures levels of optimism toward different times into the future. Over the three year period of August 2017 to October 2020, we generally see a downward optimism curve, i.e., the long-term future is discussed less positive than the short-term. During the COVID-19 pandemic the optimism curve temporarily inverted, indicating declining optimism about the near future. Our findings show that social media users make differentiated assessments of the future that change in real-time to reflect uncertainty and major societal events.

Smooth Transition Regression models: Theory and Applications in JMulti

This tutorial aims to analyze nonlinear models of Smooth Transition Regression with JMulTi and contribute to the understanding of STR specification, from the estimation until the evaluation cycle of these models. It provides pedagogical explanations, combining theoretical concepts and empirical results coherently. Especially in economic relationships, where an asymmetric behaviour with distinct effects is often found on contractions and expansions. As economic series generally present asymmetric/nonlinear behaviour, Smooth Transition Regression (STR) models provide a flexible empirical strategy that allows capturing the impacts of possible types of asymmetry in the data, Souza (2016).An overview of theory and applications in software is described. These nonlinear models describe in-sample movements of the stock returns series better than the corresponding linear model. The data used in this study consist of daily prices index from January 02, 1995 to March 29, 2013, a total of 4761 observations, from Germany (DAX30). The data was collected from the DataStream database considering 5 days a week. The data (price index) is converted to base 100 and the yields are then calculated based on the first differences in the log price series. 10-year interest rates treasury bond regarding the same markets identified has also been collected for the same period.

Can US Wage Increases be Regarded as a Leading Indicator for Bond Rates?

After the subprime meltdown, the Federal Reserve focused its attention on US non-farm payroll data in order to pave the way for its fund rate hikes. As time went by, the Federal Reserve deemed particularly one sub-component of this data, namely the increments on average weekly wage growth as a proxy for inflation and thus a plausible explanation for raising the interest rates. In that aspect, we decide to elaborate on this issue further and examine whether this implemented strategy indeed had a reflection in the real market. For doing so, we intend to determine whether there is any causality relation in either direction between US average weekly wage increases and 10-year Treasury Bond rates. We utilize the Toda-Yamamoto causality approach and come up with a statistically significant result between wages and bond rates. For robustness, we also consider the unemployment rate and consumption expenditures as independent variables.

Buffered vector error-correction models: an application to the U.S. Treasury bond rates

This paper extends the buffered autoregressive model to the buffered vector error-correction model (VECM). Least squares estimation and a reduced-rank estimation are discussed, and the consistency of the estimators on the delay parameter and threshold parameters is derived. We also propose a supWald test for the presence of buffer-type threshold effect. Under the null hypothesis of no threshold, the supWald test statistic converges to a function of Gaussian process. A bootstrap method is proposed to obtain the p-value for the supWald test. We investigate the effectiveness of our methods by simulation studies. We apply our model to study the monthly Federal bond rates of United States. We find the evidences of buffering regimes and the asymmetric error-correction effect.

Research on Treasury Bond Futures Trading Strategy Based on ARIMA Model

<p>This paper uses the ARIMA model to analyze the yield to maturity of China’s 10-year Treasury Bonds, and uses this yield rate to establish an investment strategy for 10-year Treasury Bond Futures (continuous in the current quarter). And then the strategy was back-tested in periods. In this paper, firstly, based on the ARIMA model, the full-sample fitting of the 10-year Treasury Bond yield to maturity series is carried out, and the fitting effect is confirmed. Then, the signal indicators and position sequence are established by comparing the iterative predicted value and the observed value. According to this method, the investment process of Treasury Bond Futures is simulated, and the return change of the strategy is quantified. Back-testing shows that this strategy tends to perform better in the volatile and bear market periods of the bond market but to underperform in the bull market period.</p>