Maik Schmeling

Bio: Maik Schmeling is an academic researcher from Goethe University Frankfurt. The author has contributed to research in topics: Volatility (finance) & Order (exchange). The author has an hindex of 30, co-authored 77 publications receiving 4301 citations. Previous affiliations of Maik Schmeling include University of London & City University London.

Carry Trades and Global Foreign Exchange Volatility

Abstract: We investigate the relation between global foreign exchange (FX) volatility risk and the cross-section of excess returns arising from popular strategies that borrow in low-interest rate currencies and invest in high-interest rate currencies, so-called 'carry trades'. We find that high interest rate currencies are negatively related to innovations in global FX volatility and thus deliver low returns in times of unexpected high volatility, when low interest rate currencies provide a hedge by yielding positive returns. Our proxy for global FX volatility risk captures more than 90% of the cross-sectional excess returns in five carry trade portfolios. In turn, these results provide evidence that there is an economically meaningful risk-return relation in the FX market. Further analysis shows that liquidity risk also matters for expected FX returns, but to a lesser degree than volatility risk. Finally, exposure to our volatility risk proxy also performs well for pricing returns of other cross sections in foreign exchange, U.S. equity, and corporate bond markets.

Carry Trades and Global Foreign Exchange Volatility

Abstract: We investigate the relation between global foreign exchange (FX) volatility risk and the cross-section of excess returns arising from popular strategies that borrow in low-interest rate currencies and invest in high-interest rate currencies, so-called `carry trades'. We find that high interest rate currencies are negatively related to innovations in global FX volatility and thus deliver low returns in times of unexpected high volatility, when low interest rate currencies provide a hedge by yielding positive returns. Our proxy for global FX volatility risk captures more than 90% of the cross-sectional excess returns in five carry trade portfolios. In turn, these results provide evidence that there is an economically meaningful risk-return relation in the FX market. Further analysis shows that liquidity risk also matters for expected FX returns, but to a lesser degree than volatility risk. Finally, exposure to our volatility risk proxy also performs well for pricing returns of other cross sections in foreign exchange, U.S. equity, and corporate bond markets.

Currency Momentum Strategies

Abstract: We provide a broad empirical investigation of momentum strategies in the foreign exchange market. We find a significant cross-sectional spread in excess returns of up to 10% p.a. between past winner and loser currencies. This spread in excess returns is not explained by traditional risk factors, it is partially explained by transaction costs and shows behavior consistent with investor under- and over-reaction. Moreover, cross-sectional currency momentum has very different properties from the widely studied carry trade and is not highly correlated with returns of benchmark technical trading rules. However, there seem to be very effective limits to arbitrage which prevent momentum returns from being easily exploitable in currency markets.

Market Liquidity: Asset Pricing with Liquidity Risk

Abstract: This paper solves explicitly a simple equilibrium model with liquidity risk. In our liquidityadjusted capital asset pricing model, a security s required return depends on its expected liquidity as well as on the covariances of its own return and liquidity with the market return and liquidity. In addition, a persistent negative shock to a security s liquidity results in low contemporaneous returns and high predicted future returns. The model provides a unified framework for understanding the various channels through which liquidity risk may affect asset prices. Our empirical results shed light on the total and relative economic significance of these channels and provide evidence of flight to liquidity. r 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Willingness to Pay-Willingness to Accept Gap, the "Endowment Effect," Subject Misconceptions, and Experimental Procedures for Eliciting Valuations

Abstract: The purpose of Plott and Zeiler (2005)—henceforth, PZ—was to investigate whether previously published experiments using consumption goods such as mugs and candy bars to measure gaps between willingness to pay (WTP) and willingnessto-accept (WTA) support endowment effect theory (EET). Our results demonstrate that the gap for commodities can be turned on and off by implementing procedures designed to control for subject misconceptions about the value elicitation procedures. Following experiments traditionally used to demonstrate the endowment effect, we used mug valuations to test EET. We used lottery rounds only to provide our subjects with paid practice using the value elicitation device prior to employing that device to elicit subjects’ mug valuations. In a footnote, we report evidence of contamination in the lottery data that rendered it inappropriate for our purposes (PZ 2005, fn. 15). Our footnote summarized the details of misconceptions reported in a data supplement provided to all who request our lottery data. The supplement was not referenced in our paper, so we make it available as an online Appendix to our Reply. 1 Andrea Isoni, Graham Loomes, and Robert Sugden (2011)—henceforth, ILS—use experimental procedures similar to ours and observe, just as we did, no gap in mug valuations. ILS claim that our 2005 paper is misleading and has misled researchers. They are concerned that our paper produces, and has been interpreted as producing, a set of procedures sufficient to remove all gaps, including gaps in lotteries. To justify their concern they focus on the wording of our abstract and overlook the context of paragraphs from which they quote sentences to support their thesis. The result is what we consider to be a misleading picture of the content of our paper and the facts that we report, namely that mug gaps disappear after we implement controls for misconceptions and that none of our data provides support for EET. We want to emphasize that our focus was on EET and not on more general theories of prefer ence formation, reference effects and decision processes that have emerged in the literature more recently and might explain our results. 2 In Section I, we demonstrate