News announcements, market activity and volatility in the Euro/Dollar foreign exchange market

Bauwens, Luc [UCL] Ben Omrane, Walid [UCL] Giot, Pierre [UCL]

This paper deals with the impact of nine categories of scheduled and unscheduled news announcements on the Euro/Dollar return volatility. We highlight and analyze the pre-announcement, contemporaneous and postannouncement reactions. Using high-frequency intraday data and within the framework of ARCH-type and realized volatility models, we show that volatility increases in the pre-announcement periods, particularly before scheduled events. Market activity also significantly impacts return volatility as expected by the theoretical literature on order flow.