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International Diversification Benefits with Foreign Exchange Investment Styles

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  • Tim A. Kroencke
  • Felix Schindler
  • Andreas Schrimpf

Abstract

Style-based management of the foreign exchange (FX) component of international investments with carry trade, FX momentum, and FX value strategies provides economically large and significant diversification benefits. These speculative benefits go beyond the hedging benefits of FX risk documented in the earlier literature. Our results hold after transaction costs and are confirmed in an extensive out-of-sample experiment mimicking investor decisions in real time. Adding a composite FX style portfolio to diversified allocations of global bonds and stocks leads to a 64% increase in the out-of-sample Sharpe ratio from 0.64 to 1.05, without adverse impact on other portfolio characteristics such as skewness.

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  • Tim A. Kroencke & Felix Schindler & Andreas Schrimpf, 2014. "International Diversification Benefits with Foreign Exchange Investment Styles," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 18(5), pages 1847-1883.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:revfin:v:18:y:2014:i:5:p:1847-1883.
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets

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