Search Results
Report
Rational speculators and exchange rate volatility
This paper examines whether rational, fully informed speculators will smooth exchange rates. Friedman's (1953) claim that they must do so is challenged, based on the exclusion of interest rate differentials from his interpretation of speculator behavior. Once one recognizes that interest rates matter to speculators, it becomes apparent that rational speculators could sometimes violate Friedman's description of their behavior, and buy currency when its value is relatively high or sell currency when its value is low. For this reason the presence of rational, fully informed speculators may ...
Report
Asset market hangovers and economic growth
During the early 1990s, asset prices and investment were unusually weak throughout the industrial world. This paper highlights this stylized fact, and connects it with another: in most of the industrial world, asset markets boomed for several years before collapsing around 1989. The paper suggests that the sluggish asset markets and investment growth of the early 1990s may represent, in part, symptoms of an "asset market hangover," that is, the lingering effects on real activity of collapsing speculative bubbles. The analysis relies on cross-country data for equity and real estate markets ...
Report
Currency orders and exchange-rate dynamics: explaining the success of technical analysis
This paper provides a microstructural explanation for the success of two familiar predictions from technical analysis: 1) trends tend to be reversed at predictable support and resistance levels, and 2) trends gain momentum once predictable support and resistance levels are crossed. ; The explanation is based on a close examination of stop-loss and take-profit orders at a large foreign exchange dealing bank. Take-profit orders tend to reflect price trends, and stop-loss orders tend to intensify trends. The requested execution rates of these orders are strongly clustered at round numbers, which ...
Report
Head and shoulders: not just a flaky pattern
This paper evaluates rigorously the predictive power of the head-and-shoulders pattern as applied to daily exchange rates. Though such visual, nonlinear chart patterns are applied frequently by technical analysts, our paper is one of the first to evaluate the predictive power of such patterns. We apply a trading rule based on the head-and-shoulders pattern to daily exchange rates of major currencies versus the dollar during the floating rate period (from March 1973 to June 1994). We identify head-and-shoulders patterns using an objective, computer-implemented algorithm based on criteria in ...
Journal Article
Support for resistance: technical analysis and intraday exchange rates
?Support? and ?resistance? levels?points at which an exchange rate trend may be interrupted and reversed?are widely used for short-term exchange rate forecasting. Nevertheless, the levels? ability to predict intraday trend interruptions has never been rigorously evaluated. This article undertakes such an analysis, using support and resistance levels provided to customers by six firms active in the foreign exchange market. The author offers strong evidence that the levels help to predict intraday trend interruptions. However, the levels? predictive power is found to vary across the exchange ...
Report
Stop-loss orders and price cascades in currency markets
In this paper, I provide evidence that currency stop-loss orders contribute to rapid, self-reinforcing price movements, or "price cascades." Stop-loss orders, which instruct a dealer to buy (sell) a certain amount of currency at the market rate once the rate has risen (fallen) to a prespecified level, generate positive-feedback trading. Theoretical research on the 1987 stock market crash suggests that such trading can cause price discontinuities, which would manifest themselves as price cascades. ; My analysis of high-frequency exchange rates offers three main results that provide ...