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[Here's a little background into how the Fed uses the Repo market and why.]
What is the repo market, and why does it matter?
First things first: what exactly is the repo market?
A repurchase agreement (repo) is a short-term secured loan: one party sells securities to another and agrees to repurchase those securities later at a higher price. The securities serve as collateral. The difference between the securities’ initial price and their repurchase price is the interest paid on the loan, known as the repo rate.
A reverse repurchase agreement (reverse repo) is the mirror of a repo transaction. In a reverse repo, one party purchases securities and agrees to sell them back for a positive return at a later date, often as soon as the next day. Most repos are overnight, though they can be longer.
The repo market is important for at least two reasons:
The repo market allows financial institutions that own lots of securities (e.g. banks, broker-dealers, hedge funds) to borrow cheaply and allows parties with lots of spare cash (e.g. money market mutual funds) to earn a small return on that cash without much risk, because securities, often U.S. Treasury securities, serve as collateral. Financial institutions do not want to hold cash because it is expensive—it doesn’t pay interest. For example, hedge funds hold a lot of assets but may need money to finance day-to-day trades, so they borrow from money market funds with lots of cash, which can earn a return without taking much risk.
The Federal Reserve uses repos and reverse repos to conduct monetary policy. When the Fed buys securities from a seller who agrees to repurchase them, it is injecting reserves into the financial system. Conversely, when the Fed sells securities with an agreement to repurchase, it is draining reserves from the system. Since the crisis, reverse repos have taken on new importance as a monetary policy tool. Reserves are the amount of cash banks hold – either currency in their vaults or on deposit at the Fed. The Fed sets a minimum level of reserves; anything over the minimum is called “excess reserves.” Banks can and often do lend excess reserves in the repo market.
What happened in the repo market in September 2019?
The repo rate spiked in mid-September 2019, rising to as high as 10 percent intra-day and, even then, financial institutions with excess cash refused to lend. This spike was unusual because the repo rate typically trades in line with the Federal Reserve’s benchmark federal funds rate at which banks lend reserves to each other overnight. The Fed’s target for the fed funds rate at the time was between 2 percent and 2.25 percent; volatility in the repo market pushed the effective federal funds rate above its target range to 2.30 percent.