Xiao Zhang’s research while affiliated with Haitong Securities and other places

Despite an attractive interest rate differential between China and foreign countries, existing capital control might prevent currency carry trade strategies to be executed. We focus on the copper market to study if trades are taken in order to execute carry trade strategies. We find that copper value is related to carry trade through the onshore-offshore interest differential, while the pegged nature of the USD/CNY exchange rate makes traders indifferent to the forward risk premium. We rule out the possibility of high average payoff due to peso problems, because risk factors are insignificant, implying that carry traders are either fully hedged on FX risks, or they are unconcerned about FX risks.