Analysis of a Currency Harvest Strategy
Analysis of a Currency Harvest Strategy
This project analyzes the performance of the trading strategies of Deutsche Bank, which utilize the so called “forward premium puzzle”. The basis of these strategies are currency baskets in which low-yielding currencies will be sold short whereas high-yielding currencies will be bought. These so called Carry Trades are no riskless arbitrage opportunity but investors have to bear in general exchange rate and interest rate risks. We find that for both US and EU investors, the DB Currency Harvest strategies yield significant and positive excess returns. This result is in accordance with the academic literature on the forward rate puzzle. Unfortunately, the average excess return is not stable over time. We do not find that alternative strategies (e.g. using optimal portfolio weights) can outperform the relatively simple Carry Trade-strategies. We also do not find risk factors that could explain the profitability of these strategies either. Thus, the excess returns do not seem to be simply a compensation for higher risk.