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The arrival of public information in the U.S. Treasury market sets off a two-stage adjustment process for prices, trading volume, and bid-ask spreads. In a brief first stage, the release of a major macroeconomic announcement induces a sharp and nearly instantaneous price change with a reduction in trading volume, demonstrating that price reactions to public information do not require trading. The spread widens dramatically at announcement, evidently driven by inventory control concerns. In a prolonged second stage, trading volume surges, price volatility persists, and spreads remain moderately wide as investors trade to reconcile residual differences in their private views.

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Fax: +41 61 / 280 91 00 and +41 61 / 280 81 00This publication is available on the BIS website (www.bis.org). We analyse high-frequency responses of the US yield curve to macroeconomic announcements, exploiting the high signal-to-noise ratios of these events. Surprises in the announcements evoke relatively weak reactions from the short maturities and the strong ones from the intermediate maturities. Thus the term structure of announcement effects is hump-shaped. We fit an affine-yield model to the yield changes, using the announcement surprises as instruments for the Generalised Method of Moments (GMM). The model estimates imply that the announcements impose larger shocks on an expected future target interest rate than on the current short-term interest rate and that different types of announcements generate different expectations about this target rate, how rapidly it will be approached, and how long it will be maintained. © Bank for