On April 18, 2001 US Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) surprised financial
markets by lowering the Federal Funds Target rate 1/2% between regularly scheduled FOMC
meeing dates. Securities markets in the US and Australia responded. The US 30-Euro$ rate
fell by 1/2%.and US and Australian five year bond yields fell by about 13 basis points. Equity
returnsincreased by 3% in the US and 11/2% in Australia. This paper is the first to examine
international monetary policy surprise spillovers and to estimate the response of security prices
to unobservable monetary and nonmonetary surprises. Our estimates of the impact of domestic
monetary policy surprises on domestic yields and returns are similar to other studies. The following
results are new. US monetary policy surprises spill over and affect Australian yields and equity
returns. Australian monetary surprises do not spill over to the US. Nonmonetary surprises are
more important in explaining the movements in longer maturity yields and returns than monetary
policy surprises