Active Currency Hedging Strategies for Global Equity Portfolios

Abstract

His article examines, for 21 developed countries, whether active currency hedging strategies can outperform currency benchmarks: 100% unhedged, 50%/50%, and 100% hedged. We consider four active currency strategies: 1) the “selective” strategy that consists in hedging when the forward rate is at a premium, 2) the “large premia” strategy that consists in hedging only when the premium is large, 3) the momentum strategy, and 4) the mean-reverting strategy. Results for the 1992–2004 period show that, overall, the selective strategy outperforms the other strategies at 12- and 1-month horizons. Results for sub-periods show that no strategy continuously dominates.