As described  10  In addition to improving competition in money markets, by conducting a daily operation with a known, fixed rate, the Fed can reduce uncertainty and absorb day-to-day variations in the supply of and demand for funds and collateral. An eligible lender that cannot earn the IOER rate and that has an unexpectedly large amount of funds to invest would be able to place the funds in the ON RRP facility rather than sell them in the market at an unusually low rate. This should reduce downward pressure on money market rates. 11  See the discussion in the minutes to the June and July FOMC meetings, http://www.federalreserve. gov/monetarypolicy/fomcminutes20140618.htm and http://federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomcminutes 20140730.htm. 12  See the Survey of Primary Dealers and the Survey of Market Participants. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  earlier, if the magnetic pull of IOER alone is insufficient, ON RRPs should help to form a floor on rates by providing a risk-free, overnight asset to a broad range of non-bank investors. As a result of these forces, the effective funds rate should generally print within the target range. That said, as the Chair noted during her September press conference, the Committee expects that the effective fed funds rate may vary within the target range and could even move outside of it on occasion. For example, the effective rate could move outside the target for a day or two around key financial reporting dates, such as quarter-ends, when some banks’ marginal balance sheet costs are particularly high.
Prior to the crisis, many banks typically borrowed fed funds in order to satisfy reserve requirements or obtain short-term  1  2  The effective fed funds rate is a measure of the prevailing rate in the market each day. This is calculated as a volume-weighted average of rates on trades arranged by major brokers, and is published by the New York Fed. See http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/omo/dmm/fedfundsdata.cfm. BIS central bankers’ speeches  financing. In recent years, however, the Fed’s LSAPs have led to very high levels of reserve balances, and thus reduced the need for banks to borrow fed funds to meet reserve requirements and clear payments. 2 As a result, trading activity in the fed funds market today is smaller and the nature of that activity is different than it was prior to the crisis. 3 Nevertheless, a new Federal Reserve data collection that captures both brokered and bilateral transactions shows that trading activity in fed funds remains significant. 4 These data indicate that daily trading volumes are about $ billion and are relatively stable. Moreover, longer-term correlations between the fed funds rate and other money market rates remain robust. As a result, the fed funds rate continues to be a suitable measure of the marginal cost of funding for banks, and remains connected over medium-term horizons to other short-term interest rates that also matter for the transmission of monetary policy.