Bond and Stock ETFs Lead-lag

Are there exploitable lead-lag relationships between bonds and stocks, perhaps because bond investors are generally better informed than stock investors or because there is some predictable stocks-bonds rebalancing cycle? To investigate, we examine lead-lag relationships between bond exchange-traded fund (ETF) returns and stock ETF returns. We consider iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond (LQD) and  iShares iBoxx $ High-Yield Corporate Bond (HYG) as liquid bond ETFs and SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) as a liquid stock ETF. Using dividend-adjusted daily, weekly and monthly returns for LQD, HYG and SPY during mid-April 2007 (HYG inception) through March 2018, we find that: (more…)