Modified and balanced FX carry

December 31, 2022

Jupyter Notebook

There are two simple ways to enhance FX carry strategies with economic information. The first increases or reduces the carry signal depending on whether relevant economic indicators reinforce or contradict its direction. The output can be called “modified carry”. It is a gentle adjustment that leaves the basic characteristics of the original carry strategy intact. The second method equalizes the influence of carry and economic indicators, thus diversifying over signals with complementary strengths. The combined signal can be called “balanced carry”. An empirical analysis of carry modification and balancing with economic performance indicators for 26 countries since 2000 suggests that both adjustments would have greatly improved the performance of vol-targeted carry strategies. Modified carry would also have improved the performance of hedged FX carry strategies.

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Macro factors of the risk-parity trade

November 12, 2022

Jupyter Notebook

Risk-parity positioning in equity and (fixed income) duration has been a popular and successful investment strategy in past decades. However, part of that success is owed to a supportive macro environment, with accommodative refinancing conditions and slow, disinflationary, or even deflationary economies. Financial and economic shocks, as opposed to inflation shocks, dominated markets, leading to a negative equity-duration correlation. The macro environment is changeable, however, and a strong theoretical case can be made for managing risk-parity strategies based on economic trends and risk-adjusted carry. We propose simple strategies based on macro-quantamental indicators of economic overheating. Overheating scores have been strongly correlated with risk parity performance and macro-based management would have even benefited risk parity performance even during the past two “golden decades” of risk parity.

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Jobs growth as trading signal

October 14, 2022

Employment growth is an important and underestimated macro factor of financial market trends. Since the expansion of jobs relative to the workforce is indicative of changes in slack or tightness in an economy it serves as a predictor of monetary policy and cost pressure. High employment growth is therefore a natural headwind for equity markets. Similarly, the expansion of jobs in one country relative to another is indicative of relative monetary tightening and economic performance. High relative employment growth is therefore a tailwind for the local currency. These propositions are strongly supported by empirical evidence. Employment growth-based trading signals would have added significant value to directional equity and FX trading strategies since 2000.

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Intervention liquidity

September 17, 2022

Unsterilized central bank interventions in foreign exchange and securities markets increase base money liquidity independently from demand. Thus, they principally affect the money price of all assets. Since intervention policies are often persistent, reported trends are valid predictors of future effects. If markets are not fully macro information efficient, sustained relative intervention liquidity trends, distinguishing more supportive from less supportive central banks, are plausible predictors of the future relative performance of assets across different currency areas. Indeed, empirical evidence suggests that past trends of estimated intervention liquidity help predict future relative return performance of equity index futures, long-long equity-duration positions, and FX positions across countries.

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Trend following: combining market and macro information

July 9, 2022

Classic trend following is based on market prices or returns. Market trends are relatively cheap to produce, popular, and plausibly generate value in the presence of behavioral biases and rational herding. Macro trends track relevant states of the economy based on fundamental data. They are more expensive to produce from scratch and generate value due to rational information inattentiveness. While market trends are timelier, macro trends are more specific in information content. Due to this precision, they serve better as building blocks of trading signals without statistical optimization and are easier to predict based on real-time information. Reason and evidence suggest that macro and market trends are complementary. Two combination methods are [1] market information enhancement of macro trends and [2] market influence adjustment of macro trends.

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Inflation as equity trading signal

May 14, 2022

Academic research suggests that high and rising consumer price inflation puts upward pressure on real discount rates and is a headwind for equity market performance. A fresh analysis of 17 international markets since 2000 confirms an ongoing pervasive negative relation between published CPI dynamics and subsequent equity returns. Global equity index portfolios that have respected the inflation dynamics of major currency areas significantly outperformed equally weighted portfolios. Even the simplest metrics have served well as warning signals at the outset of large market drawdowns and as heads-ups for opportunities before recoveries. The evident predictive power of inflation for country equity indices has broad implications for the use of real-time CPI metrics in equity portfolio management.

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Economic growth and FX forward returns

April 30, 2022

Economic growth differentials are plausible predictors of foreign exchange return trends because they are related to differences in monetary policy and return on investment. Suitable metrics for testing growth differentials as trading signals must replicate historic information states. Two types of such metrics based on higher-frequency activity data are [i] technical GDP growth trends, based on standard econometrics, and [ii] intuitive GDP growth trends, mimicking intuitive methods of market economists. Both types have predicted FX forward returns of a set of 28 currencies since 2000.
For simple growth differentials, the statistical probability of positive correlation with subsequent returns has been near 100% with a quite stable relationship across time. Excess growth trends, relative to potential growth proxies, would have been more appropriate predictors for non-directional (hedged) FX forward returns. Correlations with hedged returns have generally been lower but accuracy has been more balanced. Finally, balanced growth differentials that emphasize equally the performance of output and external balances are theoretically a sounder predictor. Indeed, these indicators post even higher and more stable correlations with subsequent directional returns than simple growth differentials.

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Equity convexity and gamma strategies

April 2, 2022

Equity convexity means that a stock outperforms in times of large upward or downward movements of the broad market: its elasticity to the market return is curved upward. Gamma is a measure of that convexity. All else equal, positive gamma is attractive, as a stock would outperform in market rallies and diversify in market stress. However, gamma is not observable, changeable, and needs to be estimated. Only a subset of stocks displays statistically significant gamma. Empirical analysis suggests that convex stocks can mostly be found in the materials, telecom, industrials, and energy sectors. High past volatility and price-to-book ratios have also been indicative of high gamma. Macroeconomic drivers that trigger gamma performance have been interest rates and oil prices. Systematic long-convexity strategies that seek to time convexity exposure have reportedly produced significant investor value.

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How to construct a bond volatility index and extract market information

November 27, 2021

Volatility indices, based upon the methodology of the Cboe volatility index (VIX), serve as measures of near-term market uncertainty across asset classes. They are constructed from out-of-the-money put and call premia using variance swap pricing. Volatility indices for fixed income markets are of particular importance, as they allow inferring market expectations about discount factors and credit premia, which have repercussions on all assets and the broader economy. There is a step-by-step construction plan for building a bespoke index for any rates market with liquid futures and options. Such a volatility index supports asset management in two ways. First, it is a valid basis for portfolio risk management and volatility targeting. Second, it can be used for extracting forward-looking market information, including changing probability quantiles for prices and rates, probabilities of certain extreme events, and the skewness of expectations.

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Equity factor timing with macro trends

October 30, 2021

Plausibility and empirical evidence suggest that the prices of equity factor portfolios are anchored by the macroeconomy in the long run. A new paper finds long-term equilibrium relations of factor prices and macro trends, such as activity, inflation, and market liquidity. This implies the predictability of factor performance going forward. When the price of a factor is greater than the long-term value implied by the macro trends, expected returns should be lower over the next period. The predictability seems to have been economically large in the past.

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asset management Asset Purchase Program banks bond returns bond yields bubbles capital regulation carry China collateral commodities credit returns default ECB economic data EM equity returns euro area crisis Fed financial crisis FX FX interventions FX returns government debt government deficits herding inflation information insurances Japan leverage liquidity machine learning market turmoil price factors regulation risk management shadow banking statistical methods term structure trend following variance risk premium VIX volatility ZLB
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Macrosynergy is a London based macroeconomic research and technology company whose founders have developed and employed macro quantamental investment strategies in liquid, tradable asset classes, across many markets and for a variety of different factors to generate competitive, uncorrelated investment returns for institutional investors for two decades. Our quantitative-fundamental (quantamental) computing system tracks a broad range of real-time macroeconomic trends in developed and emerging countries, transforming them into macro systematic quantamental investment strategies. In June 2020 Macrosynergy and J.P. Morgan started a collaboration to scale the quantamental system and to popularize tradable economics across financial markets.

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