Demand Effects in the FX Forward Market: Micro Evidence from Banks’ Dollar Hedging

Abstract

Using contract-level supervisory data, we show that dollar forward sales by non-US banks that are initiated at the end of a quarter and mature shortly after it concludes trade at higher prices and higher volumes. These effects are driven by banks with large net on-balance-sheet dollar assets that they can hedge around quarter-ends by selling dollars forward (increasing off-balance-sheet short positions), which suggests regulatory arbitrage to reduce capital charges for open foreign exchange (FX) exposure. Our results indicate that demand effects related to banks’ management of FX exposure are an important driver of deviations from covered interest rate parity.

Keywords: FX markets, demand shifts, hedging, price determination, global banks, international finance

JEL Classification: D40, E43, F30, F31, G15