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International Finance Discussion Papers
The International Finance Discussion Papers logo links to the International Finance Discussion Papers home page The High-Frequency Effects of U.S. Macroeconomic Data Releases on Prices and Trading Activity in the Global Interdealer Foreign Exchange Market
Alain P. Chaboud; Sergey V. Chernenko; Edward Howorka; Raj S. Krishnasami Iyer; David Liu; Jonathan H. Wright
2004-823  (November 2004)

Abstract:  We introduce a new high-frequency foreign exchange dataset from EBS (Electronic Broking Service) that includes trading volume in the global interdealer spot market, data not previously available to researchers. The data also gives live transactable quotes, rather than the indicative quotes that have been used in most previous high frequency foreign exchange analysis. We describe intraday volume and volatility patterns in euro-dollar and dollar-yen trading. We study the effects of scheduled U.S. macroeconomic data releases, first confirming the finding of recent literature that the conditional mean of the exchange rate responds very quickly to the unexpected component of data releases. We next study the effects of data releases on trading volumes. News releases cause volume to rise, and to remain elevated for a longer period. However, in contrast to the result for the level of the exchange rate, even if the data release is entirely in line with expectations, we find that there is still typically a large pickup in trading volume.

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Keywords
foreign exchange, trading volume, news announcements, high-frequency data, conditional mean, conditional volatility

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