Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Investor's Sentiment In Predicting The Effective Federal Funds Rate, Artem Meshcheryakov, Stoyu Ivanov

Faculty Publications

In this article we study if investor's sentiment measured by an intensity of Google searches may be used to predict future changes of the Effective Federal Funds rate. We find that online searches for “fed funds rate”, “fed interest rate”, “fed reserve”, “fed reserve rate” and “federal interest rate” are associated with next week decrease of the Effective Federal Funds Rate. Google searches for “fed rate hike” and “fed raise rates” are associated with next week increase of the Effective Federal Funds Rate even after we control for a number of macroeconomic indicators. We also find that intensity of Google …