Do Professional Currency Managers Beat the Benchmark?

38 Pages Posted: 31 Dec 2007 Last revised: 23 Dec 2022

See all articles by Momtchil Pojarliev

Momtchil Pojarliev

Fischer Francis Trees & Watts, Inc.

Richard M. Levich

New York University (NYU) - Department of Finance; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Multiple version iconThere are 4 versions of this paper

Date Written: December 2007

Abstract

We investigate an index of returns on professionally managed currency funds and a subset of returns from 34 individual currency fund managers. Over the period 1990-2006, excess returns earned by currency fund managers have averaged 25 basis points per month. We examine the relationship of these returns to four factors representing returns based on carry trading, trend-following, value trading and currency volatility. These four factors explain a substantial portion of the variability in index returns in the entire period and in sub-periods. We perform similar regressions for the 34 individual funds, and find many funds where returns are significantly related to these four factors. Our approach impacts the definition of alpha returns from currency speculation, modifying it from the excess return earned by the fund, to only that portion of the excess returns not explained by the four factors. While the impact on measured alpha is substantial, we find that some currency fund managers continued to generate alpha returns in the most recent sample period.

Suggested Citation

Pojarliev, Momtchil and Levich, Richard M., Do Professional Currency Managers Beat the Benchmark? (December 2007). NBER Working Paper No. w13714, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1079309

Momtchil Pojarliev

Fischer Francis Trees & Watts, Inc. ( email )

200 Park Avenue, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10166
United States

Richard M. Levich (Contact Author)

New York University (NYU) - Department of Finance ( email )

Stern School of Business
44 West 4th Street
New York, NY 10012-1126
United States
212-998-0422 (Phone)
212-995-4256 (Fax)

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
117
Abstract Views
1,494
Rank
39,597
PlumX Metrics