Currency Risk Hedging With Time-Varying Correlations

Abstract

This paper studies currency risk hedge when volatilities and correlations of forward currency contracts and underlying assets returns are all time-varying.  A multivariate GARCH model with time-varying correlations is adopted to fit the dynamic structure of the conditional volatilities and correlations. The conditional risk-minimizing hedge strategies are estimated for an international portfolio of the US, UK and Switzerland stocks, for the period of February of 1973 to March of 2002. The empirical results show that the optimal dynamic hedging strategies can capture partially the currency fluctuations, and greatly reduce the currency risk and enhance the risk-adjusted returns of the portfolio with significant foreign currency exposures.