Carry Trade

I have been bullish on the Japanese currency since March 2007. What I think defines broad movement in currencies is perception along with broad relative monetary actions. The expansion or contraction of monetary aggregates in one currency versus another is in essence its purest denominator. We show today such a timing model in the yen/usd rate of exchange. Notice that timing simply based on monetary aggregates can be not forgiving for quite some time until the new trend establishes itself.

The earlier announcement of a 25 bps rate hike by the RBA was not a big surprise. What was, however, was the knee-jerk reaction by both the USD and the JPY, and specifically the relative sizes of said jerk. As both currencies are funding currencies to AUD longs, the relative reactions provide a good, if crude, way to quantify the relative concentration of shorts in any givencurrencies (USD and JPY). Then again, it may merely indicate that tonight's USD-trading night shift at Goldman had much more Red Bull than the OZ one. In either way, both the initial knee jerk reaction as well as the subsequent follow through, indicate a roughly 50-100% greater concentration of dollar than yen-based shorts: in other words: the carry ratio funded in USD and JPY is between 2:1 and 3:2.

What could possibly connect Best Buy, Paul Krugman and the carry trade? The answer is is that everything is connected.

"While there are Dollar-funded carry trades and certainly other cyclical factors behind the Dollar’s weakness, we do not think we are seeing a speculative ‘carry bubble’ for now. The difference being a 20% strengthening in the Dollar upon a reversal, over say 3 months as opposed to 3 days for the latter." - Goldman Sachs

"The Fed’s policy of maintaining low interest rates together with the weak dollar posed a threat to the global economic recovery. It is boosting speculative investment in stock and property markets and will pose new, real and insurmountable risks to the global recovery and particularly to the recovery in emerging markets. The situation has already encouraged a huge dollar carry trade and had a massive impact on global asset prices." Liu Mingkang, China Chief Banking Regulator

In this interview with CNBC on Nov. 4, 2009, Dr. Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University and chairman of RGE Monitor, cautions investors of the coming asset bubble and crash caused by the dollar carry trade, and at the same time shared his views on the economy and housing.

This is the second time in many weeks that Dr. Roubini warned of a growing dollar carry trade and threatening to cause a global implosion. The following is a summary of his CNBC interview along with my comments.

If the American people want to get the US financial system under control, then the first areas of investigation, we submit, must be fiscal and monetary policies. And if Americans do not soon get control over the habit of borrow and spend practiced by the Congress and facilitated by the Fed, then end result must be a populist backlash against Washington and incumbents in politics and the corporate world. As Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) writes in his latest book, End the Fed: "Nothing good can come from the Federal Reserve… It's immoral, unconstitutional, impractical, promotes bad economics, and undermines liberty."

Something is definitely off here. Usually the market would follow a move in the Yen-Euro carry in lockstep. Not today.

The Yen-Euro trade just took a sharp turn lower, pushing the DXY higher. Stocks, as usual, are caught in a vortex of vacuum tubes and chasing the VXV in a circular logic argument. Give them some time to catch up.

EUR-JPN/SPY chart presented without commentary.

The quants are on their own today, frontrunning each other to lift whatever offers are available.

"So there you have it: slow painful grind before the storm or a quick reversal. Given that I expect a very sizeable move the other way, I think it is much more likely that with the use of propaganda, revised data, and 10th derivative arguments on the business cycle, the eternal utopists or evil carry-traders will try to hold this status quo and push the market a little further into risk appetite territory before all the retail accounts can get properly wiped out." - Nic Lanoir, ICAP

3:30 pm. To the dot. An underfunded SEC is happy to see computerized HFT tulipmania back in charge of the market.

The cover rate on today's auction stunk. What rate on this Note would attract the leveraged players? Not 1.08%.

As we have noted before in part 1 of the carry trade series, the carry trade is essentially a negatively skewed asset class as carry traders smooth out the typical fluctuations until liquidity concerns and/or risk appetite decreases and everyone heads for the door at the same time. Below, we have the AUD/JPY spot since 2005: