Profits and speculation in intra-day foreign exchange trading [An article from: Journal of Financial Markets]

This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Financial Markets, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
This study examines profits and speculation in the USD/EUR trading of a bank in Germany over a four-month period. Dealing activity at the bank generates profits but speculation does not seem to contribute to this. We find that speculative positions fail to become profitable within a 30-min horizon. Also, the suggestion that exchange rate volatility would foster speculative profits cannot be confirmed. To explain daily revenues, neither the bank's speculative trading volume nor its inventory position, but only customer trading emerges as a significant determinant. Furthermore, a spread analysis reveals that there is hardly any room for revenues from speculation.