FR 2420: Report of Selected Money Market Rates (restricted access)

Confidential supervisory data: not exercised here

FR 2420 is confidential supervisory data collected by the Federal Reserve. It is not for sale and not publicly downloadable: it carries no provenance badge because there is no access path we can run here. Published benchmark rates derived from it (for example the effective federal funds rate) are public, but the transaction-level micro-data is restricted. Researchers reach it only through a Federal Reserve affiliation or an approved restricted-data arrangement, inside a secure environment, with output subject to disclosure review. The page documents what the collection is and the gotchas; treat it as unverified. This is the honest grade under the institute’s Verified discipline.

FR 2420 (the Report of Selected Money Market Rates) is the daily, transaction-level collection of money-market borrowing rates that banks and foreign banking organizations (FBOs) report to the Federal Reserve: federal funds (FF), Eurodollars (ED), and negotiable certificates of deposit (CDs). It is the data behind published benchmarks and a backbone for studies of short-term funding and rate arbitrage. A paper we distill uses it: Anderson, Du & Schlusche use FR 2420 daily transaction-level FF, ED, and CD data for U.S. banks and FBOs as the basis of their IOER and CIP arbitrage-capital measures; Cooperman, Duffie, Luck, Wang & Yang use it for wholesale-funding rate sensitivity.

• Cost: not for sale. Restricted-access confidential supervisory data.
• Collector: Federal Reserve Board (the FR 2420 collection).
• Coverage: reporting banks and FBOs above a size threshold; daily, transaction-level FF, ED, and CD borrowing. The reporting population and the instrument scope have changed over time.

Access (restricted)

• Derived benchmarks are public; the transaction data is not. Published rates computed from FR 2420 (such as the effective federal funds rate) are posted by the Fed, but the underlying transaction records are confidential.
• Through a Federal Reserve affiliation or approved program. Access to the micro-data is limited to researchers at the Federal Reserve System or others granted entry to the restricted data, worked inside a secure environment with output subject to disclosure review.
• The published form and instructions are public, so the field definitions can be read even though the data cannot be pulled.

Gotchas (the ones that bite pipelines)

These are the failure modes to expect; they are documented, not verified here.

• Reporting threshold means it is not all banks. Only institutions above a size threshold report, so the transaction universe is a selected set of larger banks and FBOs. Do not treat it as the entire money market.
• Borrowing side only, by instrument. The report captures the reporter’s borrowing transactions in the named instruments; it is not a complete two-sided view of the market. Match the instrument definition to your question.
• Instrument scope and definitions changed. The collection has been revised (for example as benchmark-rate reform changed what is collected); a field can change basis between vintages. Read the instructions for your sample period.
• Settlement and timing conventions. Rates are tied to transaction and settlement dates with specific conventions; mis-dating a transaction shifts it across a rate-decision boundary. Be explicit about which date you use.
• Population shifts for regulatory reasons. Filers enter and exit as thresholds change, breaking the panel for non-economic reasons. Control for the changing population.
• Output is disclosure-reviewed and cannot be redistributed. Transaction-level results leave the secure environment only after review, and the micro-data itself cannot be shared.

Citation

Cite the collection and collector, e.g.: FR 2420 (Federal Reserve Board), confidential supervisory data; accessed under restricted-data arrangement, YYYY-MM-DD. State the instrument (FF, ED, or CD), the sample window, and the reporting population for your period.