Suppose you bank with Barclays but visit a supermarket that banks with Lloyds. To pay for your shopping you write a cheque against your deposit at Barclays. The supermarket pays this cheque into its account at Lloyds. In turn, Lloyds presents the cheque to Barclays, which will credit Lloyds' account at Barclays and debit your account at Barclays by an equivalent amount. Because you purchased goods from a supermarket using a different bank, a transfer of funds between the two banks is required. Crediting or debiting one bank's account at another bank is the simplest way to achieve this.
However on the same day someone else is probably writing a cheque on a Lloyds' deposit account to pay for some stereo equipment from a shop banking with Barclays. The stereo shop pays the cheque into its Barclays' account, increasing its deposit. Barclays then pays the cheque into its account at Lloyds where this person's account is simultaneously debited. Now the transfer flows from Lloyds to Barclays.
Although in both cases the cheque writer's account is debited and the cheque recipient's account is credited, it does not make sense for the two banks to make two separate inter-bank transactions between themselves. The clearing system calculates the net flows between the member clearing banks and these are the settlements that they make between themselves. Thus the system of clearing cheques represents another way society reduces the costs of making transactions.
8
The change in interest rates has important implications for the stockmarket prices of bonds, which pay a fixed rate of interest: fixed-interest securities, of which the traditional gilt-edged securities issued by the government are the most familiar though companies also issue fixed-interest bonds. It works like this.
Gilt-edged securities are a form of IOU (I owe you) or promissory note issued by the government when it needs to borrow money. The government undertakes to pay so much a year in interest to the people who put up the money and who get the IOU in exchange. Normally the government agrees to redeem the stock at some date in the future, but to illustrate the interest rate mechanism it is easiest initially to take an irredeemable or undated stock, which does not have to be repaid.
The original investors who lend the money to the government do not have to hold on to the IOUs. They can sell them to other investors, who then become entitled to receive the interest from the government. Suppose the government needs to borrow money at a time when investors would expect an 11% yield on a gilt-edged security. It offers $11 a year interest for every $100 it borrows. The investor is prepared to pay $100 for the right to receive $11 a year interest, because this represents an 11% return on his outlay.
Then suppose that interest rates rise to a point where an investor would expect a 12,5% return if he bought a gut-edged security. He will no longer pay $100 for the right to $11 a year in income. He will only be prepared to pay a price that gives him a 12.5% return on his outlay. The "right" price in this case is $88, because if he pays only $88 to receive $11 a year in income, he is getting a 12.5% return on his investment. So in the stock market the price of the gut-edged security that pays $11 a year interest will have to fall to $88 before investors are prepared to buy it. The original investor who paid $100 thus sees the value of his investment fall because of the rise in interest rates. Conversely, the value of his investment would have risen if interest rates had fallen.
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To summarize: If interest rates on securities go down, bond prices or prices for securities go up, and vise versa.
9
The money market comprises the demand for money and the money supply. The equilibrium in the money market is such a state of balance when the demand for money from households and businesses is satisfied by the quantity of the money supplied. The equilibrium in the money market is reached by changing bond prices.
People can hold their wealth in various forms money, bonds, equities, and property. For simplicity we assume that there are only two assets: money, the medium of exchange that pays no interest, and bonds, which we use to stand for all other interest-bearing assets that are not directly a means of payment. As people earn income, they ad to their wealth. As they spend, they deplete their wealth. How should people divide their wealth at any instant between money and bonds to gain the best profits possible and not to incur losses?
There is an obvious cost of holding money. The opportunity cost of holding money is the interest one would have gained if he (she) had held bonds. It naturally follows that people will hold money rather than bonds only if there is a benefit to offset this cost, only if holding money is more profitable than holding bonds. It may happen only when interest rates on bonds are too low to make it profitable to hold bonds.
Suppose the money market is in equilibrium when the interest rate on interest-bearing assets (e.g. Treasury bills and other securities) is 6% and the amount of money demanded is $200 mln. Now suppose the interest rate goes down, say, to 4%. In this case interest-bearing assets are no longer profitable as they can't earn a sufficient return. Hence the demand for money will rise and will lead to a temporary lack of money in the money market. If they lack money, households and businesses are likely to sell bonds they possess for cash. That will cause an increase in the bond supply, which lowers bond prices and rises interest rates on interest-bearing assets. With a higher interest rate the amount of money people are willing to have in hand will decrease again. Consequently, the money supply will adjust to a current demand to reflect a new higher interest rate.
Conversely, the increase in the money supply creates its temporary surplus, which results in the demand for bonds and bond prices going up. The interest rate falls thus restoring balance in the money market, but at a new lower interest rate.
10
MARKETS AND INTEREST RATES
For each type of investment and for many of their derivatives there is a market. There is a market in money in London. It is not a physical marketplace: dealings take place over the telephone, and the price a borrower pays for the use of money is the interest rate. There are markets in commodities. And there is a market in government bonds and company shares: the stockmarket. The important thing is that no market is entirely independent of the others. The linking factor is the cost of money (or the return an investor can get on money). If interest rates rise or fall there is likely to be a ripple of movement through all the financial markets. Money will gravitate to where it earns the best return, commensurate with the risk the investor is prepared to take and the length of time for which he can tie up his money. This is the most important mechanism in the financial sphere. As a general rule:
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v The more money you have to invest, the higher the return you can expect.
v The longer you are prepared to tie your money up, the higher the return you can expect.
v The more risk you are prepared to take, the higher the return you can expect if all goes well.
In either type of market, the buyers and the sellers may deal direct with each other or they may deal through a middleman known as a marketmaker. If they deal direct, each would-be buyer has to find a corresponding would-be seller. If there is a marketmaker, a seller will sell instead to the marketmaker, who buys on his own account in the hope that he will later be able to find a buyer to whom he can sell at a profit. Marketmakers make a book in shares or bonds. They are prepared to buy shares in the hope of finding somebody to sell to or sell shares (which they may not even have) in the expectation of finding somebody from whom they can buy to balance their books. Either way, they make their living on the difference between the prices at which they buy and sell. Marketmakers (in practice there will normally be a number of them competing with each other) lend liquidity fluidity to a market. A potential buyer can always buy without needing to wait until he can find a potential seller, securities can readily be turned into cash.
III
