The impact of central bank announcements on asset prices in real time: testing the efficiency of the Euribor futures market

This paper examines the effect of European Central Bank communication on the price discovery process in the Euribor futures market using a new tick-by-tick dataset. First, we show that two pieces of news systematically hit financial markets on Governing Council meeting days: the ECB policy rate decision and the explanation of its monetary policy stance. Second, we find that the unexpected component of ECB explanations has a significant and sizeable impact on futures prices. This indicates that the ECB has already acquired some credibility: financial markets seem to believe that it does what it says it will do. Finally, our results suggest that the Euribor futures market is semi-strong form informational efficient.