Dynamic impact of the US monetary policy on oil market returns and volatility*

In this paper, we assess the dynamic impact of the U.S. monetary policy announcements on oil market futures returns and volatility. We use intra-day data for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil futures together with a time-varying modeling approach to study the nature of this dynamic impact. In addition, we also control for macroeconomic news shocks and separately study the response of good and bad realized volatility. Evidence suggests that there is a significant time variation in the response of oil returns, as well as its volatility to the Federal Reserve policy announcements. Broadly, we also find that higher (lower) uncertainty about Federal Reserve policy actions is associated with a weaker (stronger) impact of the surprise policy announcements on oil returns and volatility. (c) 2021 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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This study assesses the dynamic impact of U.S. monetary policy announcements on oil market futures returns and volatility, finding significant time variation in the response. Higher uncertainty about Federal Reserve policy actions is associated with weaker impacts on oil returns and volatility.