Volatility the Carry Trade and The Macro Trader
If you are into global macro you trade everything. You trade stocks, bonds, commodities, and even currencies. Essentially you are looking to trade anything that presents a great risk to reward opportunity that is not correlated with your other trades.
You don't just trade different asset classes but even different strategies within an asset class. If you trade bonds you will have some directional trades on, some spread trades, and some arbitrage trades. All of his is to further diversify your returns stream. You can do the same types of things in every asset class which makes your streams of returns very uncorrelated.
One area that is particularly suited to the macro trader is that of the currency markets. Yes, they trade currency crosses and build their own cross baskets but macro funds are also known to trade one strategy called the carry trade quite frequently.
To make money in the carry trade you go long a high yielding currency and go short a low yielding currency. By doing this you are able to earn the interest rate differential which is simply the difference between the two currencies interest rates. You can also of course earn money by being right on the trade and the direction.
Using leverage you can really juice your returns in the carry trade. For instance if you are earning a three percent yield from the differential then you can earn thirty by being levered up ten times. If you lever up twenty times you will earn sixty percent. While these gains sound great they do come with great risk. You knew this couldn't be that easy.
Nope, simply put juicing things on the way up will kill you on the way down. If volatility is anything but low you will get killed with excessive leverage. Instead you need a good way to track volatility and measure when is a good and a bad time to be in the carry trade.
There are several ways to measure volatility. Some traders just look at several pairs and use an internal barometer of what is happening but most successful traders use at least some type of quantitative measure. We have the VIX which is used to look at equity volatility but happens to be a decent barometer of all volatility. There are also several newer currency volatility gauges like the JP Morgan currency volatility tools and the other investment banks volatility tools.
If you are trading the carry trade then you should be using a volatility filter to greatly improve your results. If you are not trading the carry trade then you are also missing out on some great uncorrelated and relatively easy returns. And finally if you are not macro trading then you are missing out. You should be taking advantage of all the opportunities in the world and not just in stocks. - 23208
You don't just trade different asset classes but even different strategies within an asset class. If you trade bonds you will have some directional trades on, some spread trades, and some arbitrage trades. All of his is to further diversify your returns stream. You can do the same types of things in every asset class which makes your streams of returns very uncorrelated.
One area that is particularly suited to the macro trader is that of the currency markets. Yes, they trade currency crosses and build their own cross baskets but macro funds are also known to trade one strategy called the carry trade quite frequently.
To make money in the carry trade you go long a high yielding currency and go short a low yielding currency. By doing this you are able to earn the interest rate differential which is simply the difference between the two currencies interest rates. You can also of course earn money by being right on the trade and the direction.
Using leverage you can really juice your returns in the carry trade. For instance if you are earning a three percent yield from the differential then you can earn thirty by being levered up ten times. If you lever up twenty times you will earn sixty percent. While these gains sound great they do come with great risk. You knew this couldn't be that easy.
Nope, simply put juicing things on the way up will kill you on the way down. If volatility is anything but low you will get killed with excessive leverage. Instead you need a good way to track volatility and measure when is a good and a bad time to be in the carry trade.
There are several ways to measure volatility. Some traders just look at several pairs and use an internal barometer of what is happening but most successful traders use at least some type of quantitative measure. We have the VIX which is used to look at equity volatility but happens to be a decent barometer of all volatility. There are also several newer currency volatility gauges like the JP Morgan currency volatility tools and the other investment banks volatility tools.
If you are trading the carry trade then you should be using a volatility filter to greatly improve your results. If you are not trading the carry trade then you are also missing out on some great uncorrelated and relatively easy returns. And finally if you are not macro trading then you are missing out. You should be taking advantage of all the opportunities in the world and not just in stocks. - 23208
About the Author:
If you need actionable trading ideas then check out The Macro Trader It is a weekly global macro investments advisory publication with frequent intra-week updates for time-critical analysis and actionable trading ideas.
posted by X - Men @ 3:29 AM
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