Financial Intermediaries and the Cross-Section of Asset Returns

Museum & Gold Tour Regional Economy Data & Statistics Careers Blog Press Center

About the New York Fed
- About the New York Fed
- What We Do
- Governance
- Diversity and Inclusion
- Advisory Groups
- Events
- Vendor Information
- Working within the Federal Reserve System, the New York Fed implements monetary policy, supervises and regulates financial institutions and helps maintain the nation's payment systems.
  
  Do you have a Freedom of Information request? Learn how to submit it.
  
  See the world's largest accumulation of gold as you learn about the New York Fed and Federal Reserve System on a free tour.
  
  The latest Annual Report chronicles the impact of Federal Reserve policies and includes data on the New York Fed's operations.
Markets & Policy Implementation

Economic Research
- Economic Research
- Data & Indicators
- Publications
- PEOPLE
- Liberty Street Economics Blog
- Our economists engage in scholarly research and policy-oriented analysis on a wide range of important issues.
  
  The Weekly Economic Index provides an informative signal of the state of the U.S. economy based on high-frequency data reported daily or weekly.
  
  The Center for Microeconomic Data offers wide-ranging data and analysis on the finances and economic expectations of U.S. households.
  
  Our model produces a "nowcast" of GDP growth, incorporating a wide range of macroeconomic data as it becomes available.
Financial Institution Supervision
- Financial Institution Supervision
- Supervision & Regulation
  - Circulars
  - Regulations
- Reporting Forms & Instructions
  - Reporting Forms
  - Correspondence
- Bank Applications
- Consumer Protection
  - Community Reinvestment Act Exams
  - Frauds and Scams
- As part of our core mission, we supervise and regulate financial institutions in the Second District. Our primary objective is to maintain a safe and competitive U.S. and global banking system.
  
  The Governance & Culture Reform hub is designed to foster discussion about corporate governance and the reform of culture and behavior in the financial services industry.
  
  Need to file a report with the New York Fed? Here are all of the forms, instructions and other information related to regulatory and statistical reporting in one spot.
  
  The New York Fed works to protect consumers as well as provides information and resources on how to avoid and report specific scams.
Financial Services & Infrastructure
- Financial Services & Infrastructure
- Financial Services & Operations
- Financial Market Infrastructure & Reform
- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York works to promote sound and well-functioning financial systems and markets through its provision of industry and payment services, advancement of infrastructure reform in key markets and training and educational support to international institutions.
  
  The New York Fed provides a wide range of payment services for financial institutions and the U.S. government.
  
  The New York Fed offers the Central Banking Seminar and several specialized courses for central bankers and financial supervisors.
  
  The New York Fed has been working with tri-party repo market participants to make changes to improve the resiliency of the market to financial stress.
Outreach & Education
- Outreach & Education
- Community Development
- School & University Programs
  - High School
  - College and Graduate
- Museum & Learning Center
- Events
  - Upcoming Events
  - Past Events
- The New York Fed engages with individuals, households and businesses in the Second District and maintains an active dialogue in the region. The Bank gathers and shares regional economic intelligence to inform our community and policy makers, and promotes sound financial and economic decisions through community development and education programs.
  
  The Economic Inequality & Equitable Growth hub is a collection of research, analysis and convenings to help better understand economic inequality.
  
  The Governance & Culture Reform hub is designed to foster discussion about corporate governance and the reform of culture and behavior in the financial services industry.
  
  The College Fed Challenge is a team competition for undergraduates inspired by the working of the Federal Open Market Committee.

Staff Reports

Financial Intermediaries and the Cross-Section of Asset Returns

Previous title: “Broker-Dealer Leverage and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns”

2014 July 2010 Number 464
Revised September 2013

JEL classification: G1, G12, G21

Authors: Tobias Adrian, Erkko Etula, and Tyler Muir

Financial intermediaries trade frequently in many markets using sophisticated models. Their marginal value of wealth should therefore provide a more informative stochastic discount factor (SDF) than that of a representative consumer. Guided by theory, we use shocks to the leverage of securities broker-dealers to construct an intermediary SDF. Intuitively, deteriorating funding conditions are associated with deleveraging and high marginal value of wealth. Our single-factor model prices size, book-to-market, momentum, and bond portfolios with an R² of 77 percent and an average annual pricing error of 1 percent—performing as well as standard multi-factor benchmarks designed to price these assets.

Available only in PDF pdf

59 pages / 521 kb

For a published version of this report, see Tobias Adrian, Erkko Etula, and Tyler Muir, "Financial Intermediaries and the Cross-Section of Asset Returns," Journal of Finance 69, no. 6 (December 2014): 2557-96.

tools

E-mail Alerts