Basics of market liquidity risk

January 11, 2015

Market liquidity measures the cost efficiency of trading. Liquidity risk refers to the probability that these costs surge when trading is required. Liquidity and liquidity risk are major factors in the long-term performance of trading strategies. The apparent inverse relation between liquidity and expected returns also offers obvious profit opportunities. There are various conceptual solutions for measuring market liquidity timely.

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Variance risk premiums, volatility and FX returns

December 28, 2014

Variance risk premiums mark the difference between implied (future) and past volatility. They indicate changes in risk aversion or uncertainty. As these changes may differ or have different implications across countries, they may cause FX overshooting and payback. The effect complements the simpler argument that rising currency volatility predicts lower FX carry returns. Academic papers support both effects empirically.

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Information inattentiveness of financial markets

December 19, 2014

Academic research explains macroeconomic information inefficiency with “stickiness” and “signal extraction problems”. Information stickiness means that forecasts cannot be updated continuously and hence markets partly operate on outdated information. Signal extraction problem means that forecasters struggle to separate noise from signal in economic data. The consequence is rational “inattentiveness” of financial markets, offering profit opportunities to those that analyze economic data timely and efficiently.

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Summary: Macro information efficiency and investment strategies

November 20, 2014

Markets are not efficient in respect to macroeconomic information, because both research and strategy development are expensive. As a result, there is ample scope for value generation based on researching fundamental valuation gaps, detecting implicit subsidies, and tracking the setback risk to popular strategies. Increased macro information efficiency benefits both investors and economies at large.
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Official flows and consequences for FX markets

November 8, 2014

A new IMF paper shows empirically that official currency interventions affect external imbalances and, by implication, exchange rate misalignments. There is a short-term flow impact, which is strongest when capital mobility is low. And there is a medium-term portfolio balance impact, which is strongest when capital mobility is high. Both effects are intuitive and offer lessons for FX trading strategies.

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Self-fulfilling and self-destructing FX carry trades

November 2, 2014

When foreign exchange trading meets inflation-targeting self-fulfilling investment strategies are possible. A technical paper by Plantin and Shin shows that positive FX carry encourages capital inflows that reduce inflation and allow monetary policy to condone a domestic asset market boom. Thereby FX carry strategies create their own implicit subsidy and self-validating flows. Conversely, a reversal of such flows is self-destructing.

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Disaster risk and currency returns

November 1, 2014

A paper by Farhi and Gabaix explains how fear of global crisis leads to outperformance of risky versus less risky currencies. Carry trades have worked historically, because high risk premia conditioned both high interest rates and subsequent revaluation. As a practical conclusion, gaps between perceived risk (often based on historical variances and correlation) and actual fundamental risk (as indicated by fundamental macro factors) are key value generators in FX strategies.

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Volatility surprises

October 12, 2014

Volatility surprises are market moves outside the scope of expected volatility. They often bring to attention an underestimated type of risk. A paper by Aboura and Chevallier suggests that these volatility surprises transmit more easily across markets than return shocks. Moreover, the arising of unpredicted risk across markets seems to be cumulative.

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The pitfalls of emerging markets asset management

October 4, 2014

Dedicated EM exposure has surged by over 55% since 2007, with assets concentrated on few managers. A new BIS article points out that trading flows are correlated due to the widespread use of benchmarks. Moreover, EM asset prices and final investor flows have been pro-cyclical and mutually reinforcing. These patterns seem conducive to recurrent market dislocations.

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Macroeconomic news and bond price trends

September 27, 2014

A new paper estimates that U.S. economic data explain more than a third of bond price fluctuations on a quarterly basis. The economic data impact on daily fluctuations is much weaker. It grows with the time horizon because economic factors are more persistent than non-fundamental factors. The simple powerful message is that economic news flow is crucial (and probably underestimated) for identifying market trends.

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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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