Pricing Currency Risks

Abstract

The currency market features a relatively small cross-section and conditional expected returns can be characterized by only a few signals – interest differentials, trend, and mean-reversion. We exploit these properties to construct a conditional projection of the stochastic discount factor onto excess returns of individual currencies. Our approach is implementable in real time and prices all currencies and prominent strategies conditionally as well as unconditionally. We document that the fraction of unpriced risk in these assets is at least 85%. Extant explanations of carry strategies based on intermediary capital or global volatility are related to these unpriced components, while consumption growth is related to the priced component of returns. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.