The Time-variation of Expected Returns and Volatility in Foreign Exchange Markets

This article analyzes the time variation in conditional means and variances of monthly and quarterly excess dollar returns on Eurocurrency investiments. All results are based on a vector autoregression with weekly sampled data on exchange-rate changes and forward premiums of three currencies. Both past exchange-rate changes and forward premiums predict future forward-market returns. Moreover, past forward-premium volatilities predict the volatility of exchange rates. Expected forward-market returns are very variable and persistent and exhibit marked comovements. These results carry over to cross-rate (e.g., yen/mark) investments as well.