Staff Reports
Investor Attention to Bank Risk During the Spring 2023 Bank Run
Number 1095
April 2024

JEL classification: G01, G12, G14, G21

Authors: Natalia Fischl-Lanzoni, Martin Hiti, Nathan Kaplan, and Asani Sarkar

We examine how investors’ perception of bank balance sheet risk evolved before and during the March-April 2023 bank run. To do so, we estimate the covariance (“beta”) of bank excess stock returns with returns on factors constructed from long-short portfolios sorted on shares of uninsured deposits and unrealized losses on securities. We find that the market’s perception of bank risk shifted in both the time series and the cross-section. From January 2022 to February 2023, both factor betas were mostly insignificant, but after the bank run started, they became positive and significant for all banks on average. However, in the cross-section, only the factor betas of banks put on downgrade watch on March 13 were significant, consistent with our finding that this announcement was informative. When additional banks were downgraded in April, their factor betas also became significant, even though we find the April announcements to be noninformative for these banks. We suggest that investors with limited attention focused on the banks included in the April announcements to update their priors on balance sheet risk.

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Author Disclosure Statement(s)
Natalia Fischl-Lanzoni
I declare that I have no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper. Prior to circulation, this paper was reviewed in accordance with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York review policy, available at https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/index.html.

Martin Hiti
The author declares that he has no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper. Prior to circulation, this paper was reviewed in accordance with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York review policy, available at https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/index.html.

Nathan Kaplan
I declare that I have no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper. Prior to circulation, this paper was reviewed in accordance with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York review policy, available at https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/index.html.

Asani Sarkar
The author declares that he has no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper. Prior to circulation, this paper was reviewed in accordance with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York review policy, available at https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/index.html.
Suggested Citation:
Fischl-Lanzoni, Natalia, Martin Hiti, Nathan Kaplan, and Asani Sarkar. 2024. “Investor Attention to Bank Risk During the Spring 2023 Bank Run.” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, no. 1095, March. https://doi.org/10.59576/sr.1095

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