When Do Treasuries Earn the Convenience Yield?—A Hedging Perspective

Abstract

We document that the convenience yield of U.S. Treasuries exhibits properties consistent with a hedging perspective of safe assets, that is, Treasuries are valued highly if they appreciate with poor aggregate shocks. In particular, the convenience yield tends to be low when the covariance of Treasury returns with the aggregate stock market returns is high. A decomposition of the aggregate stock‐bond covariance into terms corresponding to the convenience yield, the frictionless risk‐free rate, and default risk reveals that the covariance between stock returns and the convenience yield itself drives the effect in a substantive capacity.