We provide strong evidence of a countercyclical sensitivity of the stock market to major macroeconomic announcements. The most notable cyclical variation takes place within expansions: sensitivity is largest early in an expansion and essentially zero late in an expansion. By exploiting the comovement pattern between stocks and bonds around announcements, we show that the stock market sensitivity is large when the cash flow component of news is least offset by news about future risk-free rates. Observed fluctuations in stock sensitivities can be attributed to shifting perceptions of monetary policy responsiveness.

We quantify the impact of risk‐based and nonrisk‐based intermediary constraints (IC) on the term structure of covered interest rate parity (CIP) violations. Using a stochastic discount factor (SDF) inferred from interest rate swaps, we value currency derivatives. The wedge between model‐implied and observed derivative prices reflects the impact of nonrisk‐based IC because our SDF incorporates risk‐based IC. There is no wedge at short horizons, while the wedge accounts for 40% of long‐term CIP violations. Consistent with IC theory, the wedge correlates with the shadow cost of intermediary capital, and the SDF‐implied interest rate is a weighted average of collateralized and uncollateralized interest rates.