Monetary environments and stock returns revisited: A quantile regression approach

•We investigate the relationship between stock returns and monetary environments.•We use quantile regression to investigate the relationship at the different quantiles.•We find that monetary policy is effective only when the returns are high.•The response of the stock markets to monetary policy is found to be asymmetric.

We investigate the impact of monetary conditions on stock market returns at different points on the return distributions. Our results reveal no association between stock returns and monetary environments at the lower quantiles. At the upper quantiles, however, we find that expansive monetary conditions lead to significantly larger stock returns. The relationship between returns and monetary conditions at the upper quantiles is also found to be asymmetric, exhibiting a monotonic increase in responsiveness at successive quantiles.