The resulting collaboration of the different types of forex traders is a highly liquid, global market that impacts business around the world. Exchange rate movements are a factor in inflation, global corporate earnings and the balance of payments account for each country.
For instance, the popular currency carry trade strategy highlights how market participants influence exchange rates that, in turn, have spillover effects on the global economy. The carry trade, executed by banks, hedge funds, investment managers and individual investors, is designed to capture differences in yields across currencies by borrowing low-yielding currencies and selling them to purchase high-yielding currencies. For example, if the Japanese yen has a low yield, market participants would sell it and purchase a higher yield currency.
When interest rates in higher yielding countries begin to fall back toward lower yielding countries, the carry trade unwinds and investors sell their higher yielding investments. An unwinding of the yen carry trade may cause large Japanese financial institutions and investors with sizable foreign holdings to move money back into Japan as the spread between foreign yields and domestic yields narrows. This strategy, in turn, may result in a broad decrease in global equity prices.