We document carry trade returns based on the moments extracted from options on the underlying currencies. We establish three important results. First, a currency pair is predicted to have greater excess returns if option-implied returns are more volatile, are more left-skewed, and have fatter...

We sort currencies by countries' consumption growth over the past four quarters. Currency portfolios of countries experiencing consumption booms have higher Sharpe ratios than those of countries going through a consumption-based recession. A carry strategy that goes short in countries that are...

There is already a substantial literature documenting the fact that low yield currencies typically appreciate during times of global financial stress and behave as safe havens. The main objective of this paper is to find out what the fundamentals of safe haven currencies are. We analyse a large...

While virtually all currency crisismodels recognise that the fate of a currency peg depends on how tenaciously policy makers defend it, they seldom model how this is done. We incorporate themechanics of speculation and the interest rate defence against it in the model ofMorris and Shin (American...

What is the role of large playersʺ like hedge funds and other highly leveraged institutions in speculative attacks? In recent theoretical work, large players may induce an attack by an early move, providing information to smaller agents. In contrast, many observers argue that large players are...

In this paper, we study the effectiveness of carry trade strategies during and after the financial crisis using a flexible approach to modeling currency returns. We decompose the currency returns into multiplicative sign and absolute return components, which exhibit much greater predictability...

We investigate the relation between foreign exchange (FX) order flow and the forward bias. We outline a decomposition of the forward bias according to which a negative correlation between interest rate differentials and order flow creates a time-varying risk premium consistent with that bias....

While virtually all modern models of exchange rate crises recognise that the decision to abandon an exchange rate peg depends on how harshly policy makers are willing to defend the regime, they virtually never model how the exchange rate is defended. In this paper we incorporate both the...

This paper shows that currency carry trades can be rationalized by the time-varying risk premia originating from the sovereign solvency risk. We find that solvency risk is a key determinant of risk premia in the cross section of carry trade returns, as its covariance with returns captures a...

We analyze the worst currency carry loss episodes in recent decades, including causes, attribution by currency, timing, and the duration of carry drawdowns. To explore the determinants of the length of carry losses, a model of carry drawdown duration is estimated. We find evidence that drawdown...