Dollar Carry Trade

Fundamental reason

Simple trading strategy

Out-of-sample strategy's implementation/validation in QuantConnect's framework(chart, statistics & code)

Source paper

Lustig, Roussanov, Verdelhan: Countercyclical Currency Risk Premia

Abstract: We describe a novel currency investment strategy, the `dollar carry trade,' which delivers large excess returns, uncorrelated with the returns on well-known carry trade strategies. Using a no-arbitrage model of exchange rates we show that these excess returns compensate U.S. investors for taking on aggregate risk by shorting the dollar in bad times, when the price of risk is high. The counter-cyclical variation in risk premia leads to strong return predictability: the average forward discount and U.S. industrial production growth rates forecast up to 25% of the dollar return variation at the one-year horizon.

Other papers

• Hassan, Mano: Forward and Spot Exchange Rates in a Multi-Currency World

  Abstract: We decompose the covariance of currency returns with forward premia into a cross-currency, a between-time-and-currency, and a cross-time component. The surprising result of our decomposition is that the cross-currency and cross-time-components account for almost all systematic variation in expected currency returns, while the between-time-and-currency component is statistically and economically insignificant. This finding has three surprising implications for models of currency risk premia. First, it shows that the two most famous anomalies in international currency markets, the carry trade and the Forward Premium Puzzle (FPP), are separate phenomena that may require separate explanations. The carry trade is driven by persistent differences in currency risk premia across countries, while the FPP appears to be driven primarily by time-series variation in all currency risk premia against the US dollar. Second, it shows that both the carry trade and the FPP are puzzles about asymmetries in the risk characteristics of countries. The carry trade results from persistent differences in the risk characteristics of individual countries; the FPP is best explained by time variation in the average return of all currencies against the US dollar. As a result, existing models in which two symmetric countries interact in financial markets cannot explain either of the two anomalies.

• Jurek, Xu: Option-Implied Currency Risk Premia

  Abstract: We use cross-sectional information on the prices of G10 currency options to calibrate a non-Gaussian model of pricing kernel dynamics and construct estimates of conditional currency risk premia. We find that the mean historical returns to short dollar and carry factors (HML-FX) are statistically indistinguishable from their option-implied counterparts, which are free from peso problems. Skewness and higher-order moments of the pricing kernel innovations on average account for only 15% of the HML-FX risk premium in G10 currencies. These results are consistent with the observation that crash-hedged currency carry trades continue to deliver positive excess returns.

• Shehadeh, Erdos, Li, Moore: US Dollar Carry Trades in the Era of 'Cheap Money'

  Abstract: In this paper, we employ a unique dataset of actual US dollar (USD) forward positions against a number of currencies taken by so-called Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs). We investigate to what extent these positions exhibit a pattern of USD carry trading or other patterns of currency trading over the recent period of the ultra-loose US monetary policy. Our analysis indeed shows that USD positions against emerging market currencies are characterised by a pattern of carry trading. That is, the USD, as the lower yielding currency, is associated with short positions. The payoff distributions of these positions, moreover, are found to have positive Sharpe ratios, negative skewness and high kurtosis. On the other hand, we find that USD positions against other advanced country currencies have a pattern completely opposite to carry trading which is in line with uncovered interest parity trading; that is, the lower (higher) yielding currency is associated with long (short) positions.

• Jiang: US Fiscal Cycle and the Dollar

  Abstract: When the US fiscal condition is strong, the dollar is strong and continues to appreciate against foreign currencies in the next 3 years. This pattern is unique to the US, explaining 50% of the low-frequency variation in the dollar's value and absorbing the return predictability of the forward premium. In a model with sticky prices, I show this pattern is driven by the comovement between the US fiscal cycle and the US investors' risk appetite: During US expansions, higher US government surpluses increase the nominal value of the dollar, while less risk-averse US investors require lower returns to hold foreign currencies. Consistent with this view, the US fiscal cycle also explains the term premium, the dollar carry trade, the currency return momentum, and the US investors' capital flows.

• Opie, Riddiough: Global Currency Hedging with Common Risk Factors

  Abstract: We propose a novel method for dynamically hedging foreign exchange exposure in international equity and bond portfolios. The method exploits time-series predictability in currency returns that we find emerges from a forecastable component in currency factor returns. The hedging strategy outperforms leading alternative approaches out-of-sample across a large set of performance metrics. Moreover, we find that exploiting the predictability of currency returns via an independent currency portfolio delivers a high risk-adjusted return and provides superior diversification gains to global equity and bond investors relative to currency carry, value, and momentum investment strategies.

• de Oliveira Souza, Thiago and de Oliveira Souza, Thiago, Dollar Carry Timing

  Abstract: Dollar carry trade risk premiums - unlike dollar-neutral or foreign exchange carry risk premiums - are positively correlated with firm-level dispersions in investment, profitability, and book-to-market in addition to the Treasury-bill rate, long term bond yield, term spread, and default spread. This predictability is also statistically and economically significant out of sample: It generates Sharpe ratios as large as 1.37 (compared to 0.44 unconditionally), for example. Indeed, several forecasting models pin down the few periods responsible for the entire premium. Finally, any detailed narrative (typically based on untestable claims) in which the variables above are proxies for the latent (quantity of) risk and price of risk states - and the business cycle - in the U.S. explains the results in the present paper. However, I avoid making this type of less scientific claims as much as possible and focus on the evidence, instead.

• Kim, Sun Yong and Saxena, Konark: Long Run Risks in FX Markets: Are They There?

  Abstract: This paper documents a tight connection between long run consumption risks (LRRs), currency excess returns and traditional global currency risk factors. We adopt a novel identification strategy that estimates country level LRRs using asset market data alone. With this identification strategy in hand, we find that: (1) currencies that suffer a bad relative LRR shock appreciate on impact before depreciating over the long run, (2) the High-Minus-Low (HML) carry trade sorts currencies on the basis of global LRR exposures, (3) the dollar carry trade outperforms on impact before underperforming over the long run in response to positive US relative LRR shocks, (4) US relative LRR shocks drive global currency risk factors. We interpret these facts as evidence in favour of an international LRR model where US LRRs drives the global exchange rate factor structure.

• Bybee, Leland and Gomes, Leandro and Valente, Joao Paulo: Macro-Based Factors for the Cross-Section of Currency Returns

  Abstract: We use macroeconomic characteristics and exposures to Carry and Dollar as instruments to estimate a latent factor model with time-varying betas with the instrumented principal components analysis (IPCA) method by Kelly et al. (2020). On a pure out-of-sample basis, this model can explain up to 78% of cross-sectional variation of a Global panel of currencies excess returns, compared to only 27.9% for Dollar and Carry and 51% for a static PCA model. The latent factor and time-varying exposures are directly linked to macroeconomic fundamentals. The most relevant are exports exposures to commodities and US trade, credit over GDP, and interest rate differentials. This model, therefore, sheds light on how to incorporate macroeconomic fundamentals to explain time-series and cross-section.