Currency strategies and sovereign ratings

This paper investigates a link between the most popular currency strategies (carry trade, momentum, value) and sovereign ratings. I document that the profitability of the momentum strategy is large and significant among higher credit risk currencies, but is nonexistent among lower credit risk currencies. The profitability of currency momentum disappears when currencies rated BBB- or worse (16% of currency months) are excluded from the sample. The country credit risk conditions do not apply to the carry trade and value, which are profitable among lower and higher credit risk currencies. Sovereign rating changes do not have a significant impact on the performance of the most popular currency strategies