Oil market uncertainty and excess returns on currency carry trade

This paper examines the role of oil market uncertainty on currency carry trade payoffs. We find that oil market uncertainty can impact currency carry trade excess returns. When oil market uncertainty rises, expected currency excess returns will increase. Our findings are robust to alternative measures of oil market uncertainty and, after controlling for traditional uncertainties, different types of oil shocks. The results also hold well in both developed and emerging markets, as well as for oil-related currencies, non-oil currencies, commodity currencies, and non-commodity currencies. Additionally, oil market uncertainty can be priced in the cross section of currency carry trade excess returns. This effect can be explained by investors becoming more risk averse under high oil market uncertainty and requiring greater compensation for bearing such risk. Moreover, our measure of oil market uncertainty, the downside risk from the oil market, is quite different from that of traditional aggregate measures.     

Liquidity in the Foreign Exchange Market: Measurement,Commonality, and Risk Premiums

We provide the first systematic study of liquidity in the foreign exchange market. We find significant variation in liquidity across exchange rates, substantial illiquidity costs, and strong commonality in liquidity across currencies and with equity and bond markets. Analyzing the impact of liquidity risk on carry trades, we show that funding (investment) currencies offer insurance against (exposure to) liquidity risk. A liquidity risk factor has a strong impact on carry trade returns from 2007 to 2009, suggesting that liquidity risk is priced. We present evidence that liquidity spirals may trigger these findings.     

Return dispersion risk in FX and global equity markets: Does it explain currency momentum?

We investigate the potential link between momentum in currency returns and global economic risk as measured by currency return dispersion (RD). Initial tests contribute to the exchange rate puzzle by showing that a common macroeconomic risk component in currency markets is present in global equity markets. Subsequent tests indicate that the spread on zero-cost currency momentum strategies is larger and highly significant in high RD states compared to low RD states. Also, the relation between these momentum payoffs and global economic risk appears to increase linearly in risk. Based on this evidence, we conclude that global economic risk as proxied by RD helps to explain currency momentum profits.     

Volatility‐Managed Portfolios

Managed portfolios that take less risk when volatility is high produce large alphas, increase Sharpe ratios, and produce large utility gains for mean‐variance investors. We document this for the market, value, momentum, profitability, return on equity, investment, and betting‐against‐beta factors, as well as the currency carry trade. Volatility timing increases Sharpe ratios because changes in volatility are not offset by proportional changes in expected returns. Our strategy is contrary to conventional wisdom because it takes relatively less risk in recessions. This rules out typical risk‐based explanations and is a challenge to structural models of time‐varying expected returns.     

Predictability of currency carry trades and asset pricing implications

This paper studies the time series predictability of currency carry trades, constructed by selecting currencies to be bought or sold against the US dollar, based on forward discounts. Changes in a commodity index, currency volatility and, to a lesser extent, a measure of liquidity predict in-sample the payoffs of dynamically re-balanced carry trades, as evidenced by individual and joint p-values in monthly predictive regressions at horizons up to six months. Predictability is further supported through out-of-sample metrics, and a predictability-based decision rule produces sizable improvements in the Sharpe ratios and skewness profile of carry trade payoffs. Our evidence also indicates that predictability can be traced to the long legs of the carry trades and their currency components. We test the theoretical restrictions that an asset pricing model, with average currency returns and the mimicking portfolio for the innovations in currency volatility as risk factors, imposes on the coefficients in predictive regressions.     

Predicting exchange rate cycles utilizing risk factors

This paper attempts to predict the cyclical behavior of exchange rates by using five risk factors, viz., violations of uncovered interest rate parity (UIP), relative purchasing power parity (RPPP) and pseudo-parity for equity returns, relative (cross-country) TED spreads and relative term spreads. These factors are found to forecast periods of depreciation or appreciation and subsequent reversals. The estimates based on a dynamic probit model reveal that violations of UIP, RPPP and equity market pseudo-parity exhibit predictive power for currency cycles albeit only at short horizons. The proposed framework can be utilized by policy makers to smoothen the resulting currency misalignment and by investors to form trading strategies and hedge their positions as well as re-balance their carry trade positions.     

Currency momentum strategies

We provide a broad empirical investigation of momentum strategies in the foreign exchange market. We find a significant cross-sectional spread in excess returns of up to 10% per annum (p.a.) between past winner and loser currencies. This spread in excess returns is not explained by traditional risk factors, it is partially explained by transaction costs and shows behavior consistent with investor under- and overreaction. Moreover, cross-sectional currency momentum has very different properties from the widely studied carry trade and is not highly correlated with returns of benchmark technical trading rules. However, there seem to be very effective limits to arbitrage that prevent momentum returns from being easily exploitable in currency markets.     

Impact of portfolio flows and heterogeneous expectations on FX jumps: Evidence from an emerging market

Motivated by the recent currency crisis in Turkey, we investigate the role of portfolio flows and heterogeneous expectations on the high frequency stochastic jump behavior of the US dollar value against the Turkish lira, one of the most traded emerging market currencies in the world. We group the detected jumps into different types with respect to their direction (up and down) and timing (local and off-shore trading hours). For each type of jumps, we examine their relation with portfolio flows (in the form of equity and bond flows, and carry trade activity), and dispersion in beliefs for the future exchange rate level and key macroeconomic variables. We find that inflows to both equity and bond markets, and increasing carry trade activity significantly reduce the size of jumps and (partially) their intensity. On the other hand, heterogeneous expectations for the future exchange rate level, consumer price index and gross domestic product are found to increase the number of jumps and the average jump size.     

Momentum, Business Cycle, and Time-varying Expected Returns

A growing number of researchers argue that time-series patterns in returns are due to investor irrationality and thus can be translated into abnormal profits. Continuation of short-term returns or momentum is one such pattern that has defied any rational explanation and is at odds with market efficiency. This paper shows that profits to momentum strategies can be explained by a set of lagged macroeconomic variables and payoffs to momentum strategies disappear once stock returns are adjusted for their predictability based on these macroeconomic variables. Our results provide a possible role for time-varying expected returns as an explanation for momentum payoffs.     

Carry trade strategies based on option-implied information: Evidence from a cross-section of funding currencies

We document carry trade returns based on the moments extracted from options on the underlying currencies. We establish three important results. First, a currency pair is predicted to have greater excess returns if option-implied returns are more volatile, are more left-skewed, and have fatter tails than the returns of other currency pairs. Second, strategies based on option-implied information improve on benchmark strategies based on realized market returns and macroeconomic data. Third, if the option-implied returns of a currency pair are more left-skewed than in the past, anti-carry trades rather than carry trades perform better.     

The impact of jumps on carry trade returns

This paper investigates how jump risks are priced in currency markets. We find that currencies whose changes are more sensitive to negative market jumps provide significantly higher expected returns. The positive risk premium constitutes compensation for the extreme losses during periods of market turmoil. Using the empirical findings, we propose a jump modified carry trade strategy, which has approximately two-percentage-point (per annum) higher returns than the regular carry trade strategy. These findings result from the fact that negative jump betas are significantly related to the riskiness of currencies and business conditions.     

Exchange Rates, Equity Prices, and Capital Flows

We develop an equilibrium model in which exchange rates, stockprices, and capital flows are jointly determined under incompleteforeign exchange (forex) risk trading. Incomplete hedging offorex risk, documented for U.S. global mutual funds, inducesthe following price and capital flow dynamics: Higher returnsin the home equity market relative to the foreign equity marketare associated with a home currency depreciation. Net equityflows into the foreign market are positively correlated witha foreign currency appreciation. The model predictions are stronglysupported at daily, monthly, and quarterly frequencies for 17OECD countries vis-à-vis the United States. Correlationsare strongest after 1990 and for countries with higher equitymarket capitalization relative to GDP, suggesting that the observedexchange rate dynamics is indeed related to equity market development.     

Private information in currency markets

Using daily abnormal currency returns for the universe of countries with flexible exchange rates, we show local currency depreciations ahead of unscheduled, public sovereign debt downgrade announcements. Consistent with the private information hypothesis, the effect is stronger in lower institutional quality countries and holds after we control for concurrent public information and for publicly available rumors about the forthcoming downgrades. Our results persist when abnormal currency returns are adjusted for global carry and dollar risk factors, world equity and bond returns, as well as local stock market returns. Finally, the currency depreciations are permanent, providing evidence for a link between fundamentals and currency markets.     

Illiquidity and volatility spillover effects in equity markets during and after the global financial crisis: An MEM approach

Even though the volatility spillover effects in global equity markets have been documented extensively, the transmission of illiquidity across national borders has not. In this paper, we propose a multiplicative error model (MEM) for the dynamics of illiquidity. We empirically study the illiquidity and volatility spillover effects in eight developed equity markets during and after the recent financial crisis. We find that equity markets are interdependent, both in terms of volatility and illiquidity. Most markets show an increase in volatility and illiquidity spillover effects during the crisis. Furthermore, we find volatility and illiquidity transmission are highly relevant. Illiquidity is a more important channel than volatility in propagating the shocks in equity markets. Our results show an overall crucial role for illiquidity in US markets in influencing other equity markets' illiquidity and volatility. These findings are of importance for policy makers as well as institutional and private investors.     

Footprints in the market: Hedge funds and the carry trade

This paper uses a new database provided by the Commodity and Futures Trading Commissions to examine the price impact of hedge fund carry trades in “hot” and “cold” markets. We find that hedge funds significantly increase their carry trade positions during hot markets (periods with very high currency returns). Consistent with currency overpricing, positions in hot markets are followed by exchange rate reversals. Optimism in the stock market seems to have a spillover effect on hedge fund speculation in the currency market: controlling for the variance risk premium fully accounts for the reversal effect. Overall, our results add to a growing body of empirical evidence that institutional demand can move asset prices.     

Predictability,trading rule profitability and learning in currency markets

This paper studies currency predictability over time. We assess predictability by testing for the presence of exploitable patterns in currency returns. To do so, we first generate consistent and parsimonious reduced-form estimates of currency expected returns and variances and then use these estimates to form dynamic trading strategies that maximize the multi-period Sharpe ratio. Our results show that currency predictability is time-varying and, for a number of currencies, has increased substantially in recent times, casting doubt on the widespread view that currency pricing may be on a path of convergence towards efficiency. We find, however, that currency markets learn in an efficient manner and a close relation between our strategies and indices that track popular technical trading rules, namely moving average cross-over rules and the carry trade, suggesting that the technical rules represent heuristics by which professional market participants exploit currency mispricing.     

The pricing of bank bill futures and FRA contracts in New Zealand

This study examines pricing in the bank bill futures and forward rate agreement (FRA) markets. The study finds (i) the bill futures market is more transactionally efficient than the FRA market, and (ii) the unbiased expectations hypothesis generates more accurate estimates of bill futures and FRA yields than the cost of carry hypothesis. The first result reflects impediments to FRA market arbitrage such as illiquidity, minimum trade sizes and credit limits. The second result contradicts US evidence but is consistent with the leading role played by the bank bill and interbank dealers in New Zealand interest rate markets.     

Risk,illiquidity or marketability: What matters for the discounts on private equity placements?

Using a clean sample of private equity placements over the period of 1999 to 2012, we examine the determinants of the discounts on private placements. Classifying various determinants into three categories, namely risk, illiquidity, and marketability, we show that risk and marketability are significant determinants of the discount on private placements over the entire sample period. However, we identify a structural break in the relation between the discount on private placements with illiquidity and, to a lesser degree, marketability. Specifically, we find that liquidity is a more important determinant during the pre-2003 period, but marketability becomes a more important determinant during the post-2003 period. We attribute the structural break to substantial changes in market microstructure during our sample period. Lower transaction costs make illiquidity less of a concern for investors, whereas more active trading by investors calls for a higher discount for the lack of marketability.     

Pricing of the currency risk in the Canadian equity market

Based on a three-factor international capital asset pricing model, we examine whether the world market, the local market and the currency risks are priced in the Canadian equity market. The analysis presented in this paper is based on data collected from 2003 to 2010. As the dataset also includes the period of global financial crisis, we examine the issue of risk pricing in the full sample as well as in before and after global financial crisis periods. Unlike most existing studies, the empirical results presented in this paper are based on (i) the quasi maximum likelihood estimation (QMLE) based multivariate GARCH-in-Mean specification and (ii) the generalized method of moments (GMM) techniques. Our empirical analysis based on weekly data on 58 largest Canadian firms indicates that the currency as well as the local and the world market risks are priced in the Canadian equity market. This result holds for all exchange currency rates proxies and in all sample periods. We find that the price of the world market, the local market and the currency risks is time-varying and the Canadian equity market is partially segmented.     

Crash-neutral currency carry trades

Currency carry trades exploiting violations of uncovered interest rate parity in G10 currencies deliver significant excess returns with annualized Sharpe ratios equal to or greater than those of equity market factors (1990–2012). Using data on out-of-the-money foreign exchange options, I compute returns to crash-hedged portfolios and demonstrate that the high returns to carry trades are not due to peso problems. A comparison of the returns to hedged and unhedged trades indicates crash risk premia account for at most one-third of the excess return to currency carry trades.