Support for resistance: technical analysis and intraday exchange rates

“Support” and “resistance” levels—points at which an exchange rate trend may be interrupted and reversed—are widely used for short-term exchange rate forecasting. Nevertheless, the levels’ ability to predict intraday trend interruptions has never been rigorously evaluated. This article undertakes such an analysis, using support and resistance levels provided to customers by six firms active in the foreign exchange market. The author offers strong evidence that the levels help to predict intraday trend interruptions. However, the levels’ predictive power is found to vary across the exchange rates and firms examined.Foreign exchange rates ; Forecasting

Portfolio Diversification, Real Interest Rates, and the Balance of Payments

The paper shows that differences in real interest rates across countries can arise even with perfect competition and fully integrated international capital markets. Specifically, we find that factor returns will differ across countries which are identical except for differences in technological riskiness, overall productivity, or labor force size. We also show that differences across countries in technological riskiness, in risk aversion, in population size and in overall productivity will lead to a non-zero current account in the steady state. Higher technological riskiness, greater risk aversion, and a larger population should be associated with a current account surplus. The analysis is carried out using a two-country Diamond overlapping-generations model in which technological uncertainty is reflected in factor returns.

Extreme Returns: The Case of Currencies

This paper investigates how active price-contingent trading contributes to extreme returns even in the absence of news. Price-contingent trading, which is common across financial markets, includes algorithmic trading, technical trading, and dynamic option hedging. The paper highlights four properties of such trading that increase the frequency of extreme returns, and then estimates the relative of these properties using data from the foreign exchange market. The four key properties we consider are: (1) high kurtosis in the distribution of order sizes; (2) clustering of trades within the day; (3) clustering of trades at certain prices; and (4) positive and negative feedback between trading and returns. Calibrated simulations indicate that interactions among these properties are at least as important as any single one. Among individual properties, the orders’ size distribution and feedback effects have the strongest influence. Price-contingent trading could account for over half of realized excess kurtosis in currency returns.Crash, Fat Tails,Kurtosis,Exchange Rates,Order Flow,High-Frequency,Microstructure,Jump Process,Value-At-Risk,Risk Management

Overconfidence in Currency Markets

This paper tests the influential hypothesis, typically attributed to Friedman (1953), that irrational traders will be driven out of financial markets by trading losses. The paper’s main finding is that overconfident currency dealers are not driven out of the market. Traders with extensive experience are neither more nor less overconfident than their inexperienced colleagues. We first provide evidence that currency dealers are indeed overconfident, which is notable since they get daily trading practice and face intense financial incentives to accuracy.Overconfidence, imperfect rationality, currency dealers, survival of imperfect rationality

Rapidly rising corporate debt: are firms now vulnerable to an economic slowdown?

The buildup of debt in the late 1990s has raised concerns about the U.S. nonfinancial corporate sector's health and its vulnerability to economic downturns. An analysis of the sector suggests that while small firms are experiencing some weakness, corporations as a group are in good financial shape.Corporations - Finance ; Debt

Extreme Returns without News: A Microstructural Explanation

What triggers extreme exchange-rate returns? Though news is the source of volatility in standard theoretical models, in reality volatility is often unrelated to news. This paper shows that extreme exchange-rate returns -- and, more generally, high kurtosis of returns -- are statistically inevitable even in the absence of news. We identify four microstructural sources of return kurtosis in price-contingent order flow: (1) high kurtosis in the distribution of price-contingent order sizes; (2) clustering of price-contingent order executions at certain times of day; (3) clustering of order executions at certain price levels; and (4) the tendency of positive-feedback trading to propagate trends. Using simulations calibrated to price-contingent orders placed at a major foreign exchange dealing bank we show that when each factor operates in isolation, the one that contributes most to kurtosis in returns is kurtosis in the order-size distribution. When the factors operate simultaneously, however, their interactions prove far more important. Extreme returns in the absence of news should be viewed as natural rather than anomalous.kurtosis, exchange rates, order flow, high-frequency, microstructure, jump process, value-atrisk, risk management

Greece illustrates the importance of staying within economic limits

What lessons can Greece provide with a view to preventing future debt crises? Carol Osler writes that the Greek debt crisis illustrates the importance of staying within economic limits. She notes that while it is impossible to ensure countries will always be financially responsible, well-run societies should aim to protect citizens from the dangers associated with excess government debt

Second district housing prices: why so weak in the 1990s?

Between 1990 and 1997, poor economic fundamentals and a prolonged hangover from excessively rapid growth in the 1980s caused house prices in the New York metropolitan area to grow much more slowly than prices nationwide; these factors played a smaller role in the decline of upstate New York's house prices relative to the nation's.Housing ; Prices ; Federal Reserve District, 2nd

Asymmetric Information and the Foreign-Exchange Trades of Global Custody Banks

This paper provides the first rigorous empirical analysis of markups on custodial foreign exchange trades. It finds that they substantially exceed relevant benchmarks such as interbank half-spreads. We trace this to an information asymmetry -- custodial bank dealers know more about their prices and bid-ask spreads than their client funds. We also examine the asset managersÂ’ continued heavy reliance on this high-cost approach to trading when alternatives are available with lower markups. We provide evidence that this choice does not reflect ignorance of the cost differential. Analysis relies on the complete foreign exchange trading record of a mid-sized global custody bank during calendar year 2006.

Price Discovery in Currency Markets

This paper examines the price discovery process in currency markets, basing its analysis on the pivotal distinction between the customer (end-user) market and the interdealer market. It first provides evidence that the price discovery process cannot be based on adverse selection between dealers and end users, as postulated in standard equity-market models, because the spreads dealers quote to their customers are not positively related to a trade’s likely information content. The paper then highlights three hypotheses from the literature – fixed operating costs, market power, and strategic dealing – that may explain the cross-sectional variation in customers spreads. The paper finishes by proposing a price discovery process relevant to liquid two-tier markets and providing preliminary evidence that this process applies to currencies.Bid-ask spreads, foreign exchange, asymmetric information, microstructure, price discovery, interdealer, inventory, market order, limit order