Carry Trade as a Tool of Profit Making
CARRY TRADE AS A TOOL OF PROFIT MAKING
Introduction
First, let’s take a look at the carry trade. In short, the carry trade is used when an investor or speculator is attempting to capture the price appreciation or depreciation in a currency while also profiting on the interest differential. Using this strategy, a trader is essentially selling a currency that is offering a relatively low interest rate while buying a currency that is offering a higher interest rate. This way, the trader is able to profit from the differential of interest rates.
With the introduction of the carry trade , yen currency pairs have become the speculator’s preference. Currency crosses like the GBP/JPY and NZD/JPY have been able to net small intraday or even longer term profits for the currency trader as speculation continues to support the bid tone. But how can one enter into a market that is already seemingly overheated? Even if a trader could, what would be a good price, and doesn’t everything that goes up come down? The answer is easier and simpler than most believe. In this article we’ll show you how to use carry trades to profit from overwhelming market momentum.
Definition
A strategy in which an investor sells a certain currency with a relatively low interest rate and uses the funds to purchase a different currency yielding a higher interest rate. A trader using this strategy attempts to capture the difference between the rates – which can often be substantial, depending on the amount of leverage the investor chooses to use.
For example, taking one of the favored pairs in the market right now, let’s take a look at the New Zealand dollar/Japanese yen currency pair. Here, a carry trader would borrow Japanese yen and then convert it into New Zealand dollars. After the conversion, the speculator would then buy a Kiwi bond for the corresponding amount, earning 8%. Therefore, the investor makes a 7.5% return on the interest alone after taking into account the 0.5% that is paid on the yen funds.
Now on the earning side of the trade, the investor is also hoping that the price will appreciate in order to make further gains on the transaction. In this case, anyone that has invested in the NZD/JPY trade has been able to reap plenty of benefits.
Evolution of the carry trade
The first wave of carry trade started in the late 1980s when financial speculators borrowed in yen and invested in European securities. This first phase ended in 1993 after the Japanese bubble collapsed, Japanese investors retreated home and the yen appreciated.
The second round of carry trade began in the summer of 1995 and ended in late 1998 after Russia defaulted, the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund collapsed, and the Japanese government planned to recapitalize the distressed banking sector. The yen rose 15% against the dollar in a week.
The recent wave of the yen carry trade is built on the Japanese government’s policy of keeping its interest rate and currency low in order to export its way out of recession and deflation. It has continued until (10-17 August) when the yen jumped 10% caused by the default in sub-prime mortgages and the knock-on effects on equity markets worldwide.
Profitability in carry trade
Over the past five years, official interest rates have been lowest in Japan and Switzerland, and the yen and the Swiss franc are the most commonly cited funding currencies (Graph 1). The Australian dollar, the New Zealand dollar and sterling have appreciated steadily and have been cited as popular target currencies, although a number of other currencies are often used as well (eg the Brazilian real and the South African rand). Since 2004, with the normalization of policy rates from historically low levels, the US dollar has moved from being a funding currency to a potential target.
The carry-to-risk ratio is a popular ex ante measure of the attractiveness of carry trades. It adjusts the interest rate differential by the risk of future exchange rate movements, where this risk is proxied by the expected volatility (implied by foreign exchange options) of the relevant currency pair. By this measure, carry trade positions that were short yen and long target currencies such as the Australian dollar were increasingly promising from 2002 to 2005.
Graph: 1
Sources: Bloomberg; JPMorgan Chase; national data; BIS calculations
]]>
These positions have remained so on average, despite two bouts of higher volatility which led to significant, albeit temporary, declines in the attractiveness of some target currencies (eg the South African rand).Over the longer term, however, the attractiveness of carry trades relative to other investments is less clear (Burnside et al (2006)).
Risk reversals – or the price difference between two equivalently out of the-money options – potentially provide an alternative market indicator of perceived risks in carry trades. If the risk associated with carry trade returns is not generalized uncertainty about future values of the exchange rates, as the carry-to-risk measure implicitly assumes, but rather directional uncertainty, this will be more
Search Terms Forex ePips:
- carry trade as a tool of profit making
- measure attractiveness carry trade