This paper uses forecast data from 1995 through 2014 to examine, whether the market consensus of exchange rate forecasts has an effect on the forecasts of individual experts. Such an effect could ...take the form of herding or anti-herding. We use a very comprehensive data set to study experts' forecasts of three of the most important exchange rates. The results indicate that anti-herding vis-à-vis the consensus of forecasts occurs more often than herding. We also show how the increase in the forecasting horizon and financial crises affect the intensity of anti-herding behavior. Moreover, we report that the (anti-)herding behavior does not affect the forcasting performnce.
•Foreign exchange forecasters strategically differentiate from each other.•Especially when issuing short-term forecasts, forecasters anti-herd rather than herd.•Anti-herding behavior does not seem to affect overall forecaster performance.•Financial crises only slightly decrease anti-herding behavior of forecasters.•Central banks should consider the behavior of forecasters in their forward guidance.
Crypto-currency trading is a rapidly growing form of behaviour characterised by investing in highly volatile digital assets based largely on blockchain technology. In this paper, we review the ...particular structural characteristics of this activity and its potential to give rise to excessive or harmful behaviour including over-spending and compulsive checking. We note that there are some similarities between online sports betting and day trading, but also several important differences. These include the continuous 24-hour availability of trading, the global nature of the market, and the strong role of social media, social influence and non-balance sheet related events as determinants of price movements. Methods. We review the specific psychological mechanisms that we propose to be particular risk factors for excessive crypto trading, including: over-estimations of the role of knowledge or skill, the fear of missing out (FOMO), preoccupation, and anticipated regret. The paper examines potential protective and educational strategies that might be used to prevent harm to inexperienced investors when this new activity expands to attract a greater percentage of retail or community investors. Discussion and conclusions. The paper suggests the need for more specific research into the psychological effects of regular trading, individual differences and the nature of decision-making that protects people from harm, while allowing them to benefit from developments in blockchain technology and crypto-currency.
This work studies the information content of trades in the world’s largest over-the-counter (OTC) market, the foreign exchange (FX) market. It analyzes a novel, comprehensive order flow data set, ...distinguishing among different groups of market participants and covering a large cross-section of currency pairs. We find compelling evidence of heterogeneous superior information across agents, time, and currency pairs, consistent with the asymmetric information theory and OTC market fragmentation. A trading strategy based on the permanent price impact, capturing asymmetric information risk, generates high returns even after accounting for risk, transaction cost, and other common risk factors shown in the FX literature.
This study compares the market efficiency of China’s onshore and offshore foreign exchange markets before and after the foreign exchange reform on August 11, 2015. We use the multifractal detrended ...fluctuation analysis of the onshore and offshore RMB/USD spot exchange rate series as basis. We then find that the onshore foreign exchange market before the reform has the lowest market efficiency, which increased after the reform. The offshore foreign exchange market before the reform has the highest market efficiency, which dropped after the reform. This finding implies the increased efficiency of the onshore foreign exchange market and the loss of efficiency in the offshore foreign exchange market. We also find that the offshore foreign exchange market is more efficient than the onshore market and that the gap shrank after the reform. Changes in intervention of the People’s Bank of China since the reform is a possible explanation for the changes in the efficiency of the foreign exchange market.
•The multifractal properties of China’s onshore and offshore foreign exchange markets before and after the foreign exchange reform are examined.•The efficiency of China’s onshore foreign exchange market is lower than the efficiency of the offshore market.•After the reform, the efficiency of China’s onshore foreign exchange market increased, and the efficiency of the offshore market dropped.•Changes in the PBoC’s intervention is probably a major cause for changes in foreign exchange market efficiency.
In this paper, we analyse two interesting applications related to the dynamics of economic phenomena linked to the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), informative surprises, and the Model-Data Paradox ...of Chaos in certain top currency pairs from the foreign exchange market (FOREX). On the one hand, we empirically show that the FOREX market reacts under the Efficient Market Hypothesis in some cases, creating a significant variation in a short period of time (15, 30, and 60 min) in the quotes of the main currencies from the most important economic regions in the West (the United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom). This variation would depend on the actual deviation of high-impact macroeconomic news reported by these markets in relation to trade balance, unemployment rate, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), retail sales, the Industrial Production Index (IPI), and the Consumer Price Index (CPI). On the other hand, by testing the Model-Data Paradox of Chaos, we empirically verify that if we consider all the information available in the financial markets of currencies (or at least, more desegregated data) instead of daily data, and we apply a robust chaotic behaviour detection method, we can find differences in relation to the detection of chaos on the same series but with different temporal frequencies. This allows us to confirm that behind these financial time series which show an apparently random irregular evolution, there would be a generating system which, although unknown in principle, would be deterministic (and nonlinear), and we could take advantage of that deterministic character to make predictions, even if only in the short term, understanding “short term” as the time it takes for the market to incorporate these informative surprises in the FOREX market analysed.
Strained Relations Bordo, Michael D; Humpage, Owen F; Schwartz, Anna J
2015, 2015-03-02
eBook
During the twentieth century, foreign-exchange intervention was sometimes used in an attempt to solve the fundamental trilemma of international finance, which holds that countries cannot ...simultaneously pursue independent monetary policies, stabilize their exchange rates, and benefit from free cross-border financial flows. Drawing on a trove of previously confidential data, Strained Relations reveals the evolution of US policy regarding currency market intervention, and its interaction with monetary policy. The authors consider how foreign-exchange intervention was affected by changing economic and institutional circumstances—most notably the abandonment of the international gold standard—and how political and bureaucratic factors affected this aspect of public policy.
•Mutual information is used as the edge weights of nodes instead of PCC, which overcomes the shortcomings of linear correlation functions.•SGD turns into a new cluster center and gradually becomes a ...point connecting the Asian and European clusters during and after the US sub-prime crisis.•Liang's entropy theory, which has not been adopted before in the global foreign exchange market, is considered.
The foreign exchange (FX) market is a typical complex dynamic system under the background of exchange rate marketization reform and is an important part of the financial market. This study aims to generate an international FX network based on complex network theory. This study employs the mutual information method to judge the nonlinear characteristics of 54 major currencies in international FX markets. Through this method, we find that the FX network possesses a small average path length and a large clustering coefficient under different thresholds and that it exhibits small-world characteristics as a whole. Results show that the relationship between FX rates is close. Volatility can quickly transfer in the whole market, and the FX volatility of influential individual states transfers at a fast pace and a large scale. The period from July 21, 2005 to March 31, 2015 is subdivided into three sub-periods (i.e., before, during, and after the US sub-prime crisis) to analyze the topology evolution of FX markets using the maximum spanning tree approach. Results show that the USD gradually lost its core position, EUR remained a stable center, and the center of the Asian cluster became unstable. Liang's entropy theory is used to analyze the causal relationship between the four large clusters of the world.
We analyze total, asymmetric and frequency connectedness between oil and forex markets using high-frequency, intra-day data over the period 2007–2017. By employing variance decompositions and their ...spectral representation in combination with realized semivariances to account for asymmetric and frequency connectedness, we obtain interesting results. We show that divergence in monetary policy regimes affects forex volatility spillovers but that adding oil to a forex portfolio decreases the total connectedness of the mixed portfolio. Asymmetries in connectedness are relatively small. While negative shocks dominate forex volatility connectedness, positive shocks prevail when oil and forex markets are assessed jointly. Frequency connectedness is largely driven by uncertainty shocks and to a lesser extent by liquidity shocks, which impact long-term connectedness the most and lead to its dramatic increase during periods of distress.
This study empirically verifies the evolving and time-varying efficiency of Indian foreign exchange market using the framework of adaptive market hypothesis (AMH). Whether market efficiency is time ...varying or static, and if time varying, identification of possible events causing such time-varying efficiency are the two major agenda of this study. We employ a set of recent methods which are robust and possess stronger power properties. Moreover, we follow a fixed-length rolling window approach to explore time-varying nature of market efficiency and to avoid data-snooping bias. Our overall findings suggest that market efficiency is not an all-or-nothing condition; it varies over time. We also find that episodes of efficiency coincide with emergence of major events and market microstructure issues. Particularly, changes in exchange rate regime, financial turbulence, major central bank interventions and trade volume are the prominent causes for time-varying efficiency in INR–USD exchange rate. The evidence of swing between efficiency and inefficiency can prompt currency traders to exploit arbitrage opportunities that emerge with different market conditions.
This study investigates the efficiencies of the exchange markets for four major currencies-the euro (EUR), the pound (GBP), the Canadian dollar (CAD) and the Japanese yen (JPY)-from 2005 to 2019 by ...using multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA). This study also investigates the causes of these efficiencies. Significant multifractal properties are demonstrated by the four markets, and long-range correlation and fat-tail distribution properties are the main causes. We calculate and compare the multifractal degrees in three subsamples, which are classified based on their temporal relation to two economic events: the 2008 financial crisis and the announcement by the Federal Reserve of its withdrawal from the quantitative easing policy in 2014. Empirical results suggest that multifractal properties exist at different levels in the subsamples, thus showing that these events affect foreign exchange market efficiencies in terms of statistics and the fractal market. The JPY exchange market has the fewest multifractal properties, thus indicating that this exchange market has the highest market efficiency among these four exchange markets. The empirical results have implications for the nonlinear mechanism and efficiency in foreign exchange markets, which may help investors effectively manage market risks and benefit a stable global economy.
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