Using historical data from 1926 to 2002, the article shows that for investors with very long horizons,(longer than 25 years), stocks were safer in the U.S. than government bonds. For investors with shorter horizons, both stocks and bonds were exposed to substantial risks, and stocks did not...

In this paper, we present a few simple market-timing strategies that appear to outperform the quot;buy-and-holdquot; strategy, with real-time data from 1970 to 2000. Our focus is on spreads between the E/P ratio of the Samp;P 500 index and interest rates. Extremely low spreads, as compared to...

This study models the bid-ask spread in financial markets as a function of asset price variability and order flow. The market-maker is characterized as passively accepting orders to buy and to sell a security at the market's prevailing price (plus or minus half the bid-ask spread). The bid-ask...

In recent years, monetary policymakers have monitored several measures of market expectations of future inflation. One of these measures is based on the yield differential between nominal and inflation indexed Treasury securities. This yield spread is also called the “breakeven inflation...

In recent years, members of Congress and academia have repeatedly urged the U.S. Treasury to issue some portion of its debt in the form of inflation indexed bonds. With an indexed bond, the interest and maturity value are adjusted by the rate of inflation over the life of the bond. Because the...

In 1997, the U.S. Treasury began the quarterly issuance of inflation indexed bonds, called Treasury Inflation Protection Securities (TIPS). So far, the Treasury has issued both 5-year and 10-year indexed bonds and will begin to issue 30-year indexed bonds and inflation indexed savings bonds in...

Conventional wisdom tells us that stocks tend to outperform government bonds in the long term. That is, if stocks are held long enough, they are usually better investments because their total return is likely to be higher than the return on bonds. While this view may be correct in principle, in...

Investors and policymakers have long hoped that Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) would provide an accurate measure of long-term market inflation expectations. To make informed decisions and to ensure that inflation does not erode the purchasing power of their assets, investors need...

The phenomenal growth of financial market and trading activities worldwide has led to tremendous growth in large-value payments systems. Large-value payments systems are the electronic banks used to transfer large payments among themselves. Payment orders processed in such systems in the United...