Why is the carry trade so dangerous ?

 Few people can resist the lure of free money. Hence the recent fad for ‘stoozing’; borrowing large sums on credit cards with a 0% interest rate and investing the proceeds in a savings account.

Without having to advance a penny of their own money, the borrower can pocket a few hundred pounds a year in interest. When the credit card’s zero-rate period comes to an end, the borrower pays back the loan or, even better, rolls the debt over on to a new card. At one point a couple of years ago this trick was so popular that personal finance pages filled up with tips on how to do it.

Stoozing has gone out of favour somewhat since most credit cards began charging a balance transfer fee, making the returns less attractive (although you can still net 2%-3% a year from it). 

The big difference is that carry trades are a lot more dangerous than stoozing. Firstly, rather than being invested in a safe savings account, the money increasingly flows into riskier place, such as emerging market assets. Secondly, carry trades are often cross-currency carry trades, which carry extra risks.

In a currency carry trade, the speculator borrows money in a low-interest rate currency and buys higher-yielding assets in a different currency. Today, the low-rate currency is generally the Japanese yen; the higher-yielding assets are often US dollar bonds, but sometimes more esoteric assets such as Icelandic housing bonds or even emerging market equities or commodities.

The carry trade is appealing because of the type of returns it can earn, particularly if the proceeds are invested in bonds. These returns may not be huge, but they’re steady and consistent, and so they appeal to money managers who want a steady income stream – for example, hedge fund managers with pension fund investors.

But the counterpoint to these small, steady returns is the possibility of a very large, very sudden loss. The biggest risk is generally that the exchange rate moves against you – the higher-interest rate currency rapidly devalues, reducing the value of your assets relative to your borrowing. That's why these trades are often described as “picking up nickels in front of a steamroller”

So what might cause the carry trade to unwind? Dresdner Kleinwort strategist Albert Edwards identifies one route. Plenty of carry trade money has flowed into risky cyclical assets. As we head into the economic slowdown, these assets are likely to fall in value. As a result, speculators in them will cut their losses, bail out and repay their yen debts.

This flow of money back into yen could boost the yen’s exchange rate, regardless of the BoJ’s desire to keep the yen cheap to help its exporters. A rising yen would put other carry traders’ positions under water, causing them to sell off and head back into yen, and so on in a vicious circle.