Macroeconomic news and risk factor innovations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to determine if macroeconomic announcements affect the Fama‐French market, size, book‐to‐market risk factors and momentum factor. Design/methodology/approach – Using unexpected announcements of major macroeconomic indicators, a study is made of how daily innovations of risk factors react to macroeconomic shocks. In a Flannery and Protopapadakis framework, the impact of macroeconomics surprises on the levels and volatilities of the risk factors is measured. A VAR model is employed as a robustness check. To better understand the mechanism of announcement impacts on risk factors, the relationship between the macroeconomics announcements and Fama‐French size/book‐to‐market portfolio returns is investigated. Findings – Inflation, employment, consumption and business activities were found to affect levels and volatilities of risk factors. However, these macro variables affect risk factors differently. Inflation and non‐farm payrolls decrease the market risk premium while increasing the size premium. Personal income increases the size premium while reducing the book‐to‐market premium. Industrial production and GDP only influence the level of the momentum factor. In this model specification, producer inflation (PPI) and personal income increase the volatility of the size premium while business inventories increase the volatility of the market premium. Originality – This paper's results support the notion that different risk factors capture different economic fundamentals.