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Sunday, April 26, 2009

Carry Trading in Forex

By Hass67

In forex markets, carry trading is an easy way to take benefit of the basic economic principle that money is constantly flowing in and out of different markets. Markets with a high rate of return will generally attract more capital.

Carry trading is a popular trading strategy employed by professional forex traders. Hedge funds and investment banks use leveraged carry trading as one of the favorite strategies. Retail forex traders can also benefit from carry trading.

Carry trading means taking benefit of the interest rate difference between two currencies. Carry traders take benefit of the interest rate differential between two currencies by buying or going long on the high interest rate currency and selling or going short on low interest rate currency.

Lets make it clear with a simple example: suppose New Zealand dollar is offering an interest rate of 4.75% while the Japanese yen is offering an interest rate of 0.25%.

In order to carry trade, an investor buys New Zealand dollars (NZD) and sells Japanese Yens (JPY). As long as the exchange rate between the NZD and JPY does not change, the investor will earn a profit of 4.75-0.25=4.5%. Using a leverage of 5:1, this 4.5% return will be leveraged into 22.5%.

The good thing is if the currency pair NZD/JPY appreciates, the investor can get a capital appreciation as well as a yield on the investment. Most of the time, the currency pair will tend to appreciate as many investors will jump on the bandwagon when they see a good carry trading opportunity. The more investors carry trade, the more the currency pair appreciates.

It depends a lot on the mood of the investors as a group. If investors as a group have low risk aversion, carry trading will be profitable. But if the investors as a group suddenly develops high risk aversion, carry trading will become unprofitable.

By entering into a carry trade, an investor expects to profit from an interest rate differential between the two currencies. But if the low interest rate currency appreciates considerably for some reason or another, carry trade will become unprofitable.

How do you check the mood of the investors? By knowing whether the currency is overbought or oversold. For this you need to identify the current trend of the currency pair and see whether it is moving in the right direction!

You can use the MACD (moving average convergence divergence) indicator to identify the trend. - 23167

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