Até o ano de 1964, o Brasil enfrentou sérias adversidades no campo econômico, não só pela ausência de tradição exportadora e cultural mas, também, pelas limitações da estrutura operacional do mercado de câmbio. Com o advento da Lei 4595, de 31.12.64, extingue-se a Sumoc, cria-se o Banco Central, estabelecem-se condições para o Banco do Brasil impulsionar as suas atividades comerciais e normatiza-se o funcionamento do mercado de capitais, circunstância que acenava como sinal dos novos tempos.De lá para cá, o país, a acompanhar a torrente dos tempos modernos, organizou o sistema financeiro nacional e empreendeu forte escalada na área internacional. A criação de agências bancárias no exterior estimulou o aprendizado de novos conhecimentos e a aquisição de técnicas operacionais sofisticadas, igualando-nos, no particular, às nações mais desenvolvidas do mundo. Tais aspectos são destacados no presente trabalho, inicialmente, por meio de uma abordagem do mercado de câmbio brasileiro, sua estrutura em termos organizacionais e o seu funcionamento em termos operacionais. De outra parte, ao relatarmos, de forma retrospectiva, a política cambial brasileira, desde a Segunda Guerra Mundial aos dias de hoje, enfatizamos as inúmeras tentativas de acerto na condução das políticas monetária e cambial, as quais sempre tiveram o propósito de debelar o processo inflacionário e o atingimento de superávits comerciais para aliviar o BP do país. Um assunto, no entanto, percorre toda a nossa análise e se constitui no tema central desta Dissertação: as taxas cambiais como produto de políticas cambiais equivocadas, a sua relação direta com as taxas de juros e os seus efeitos deletérios nas contas públicas. Neste ponto, procedemos a um estudo dos diversos planos econômicos implantados na economia, com destaque para o único que efetivamente teve sucesso na finalidade a que inicialmente se destinou: o Plano Real. A prática demonstrou, todavia, que há hoje um indisfarçável consenso sobre as inconsistências da atual política cambial, nossa dependência dos capitais externos e as dificuldades para desmontar a armadilha da sobrevalorização cambial e dos juros elevados. O atual arcabouço macroeconômico, a despeito da estabilidade monetária, não pode mais voltar-se apenas para o controle de metas de inflação. / Up until 1964, Brazil faced severe difficulties in the economic sphere, due not only to the absence of an exporting and cultural tradition but also to the limitations in the operational structure of its currency exchange market. When Law 4595 of 12.31.64 comes into force, Sumoc ceases to exist, Banco Central (Brazilian Central Bank) is created, the conditions necessary for Banco do Brasil to boost its activities are established and the operation of the stock becomes regulated, an event hailed as a sign of the new times. From then on, the country, in keeping with modern times, has organized the domestic financial system and inserted itself heavily in the international arena. The establishment of bank branches abroad has fostered the development of fresh knowledge and the acquisition of sophisticated operational techniques, bringing us to par, in this particular, with the most developed nations in the world. Such aspects are highlighted in this paper, initially, through an overview of the Brazilian exchange market, its organizational structure and operation. Then, as we retrospectively describe the Brazilian exchange policy from World War II up to the present, we emphasize the countless attempts at correctly adjusting the administration of monetary and exchange policies, which have always been aimed at subduing the inflationary process and reaching commercial surplus in order to alleviate the country's Balance of Payments. One subject, however, is present throughout our analysis and constitutes the central theme to this Dissertation: exchange rates as a product of misguided exchange policies, their direct correlation to interest rates and their adverse effects on public accounts. On that point, we carry out a study of the several economic plans implemented in the country, highlighting the only one to actually reach success regarding its initial goal: Plano Real (Real Plan). Nonetheless, experience has shown that there is currently a hardly concealable consensus on the inconsistencies in the present exchange policy, our dependence on foreign capital and the difficulties to free the country from the trap of currency exchange over appreciation and high interest rates. The current macroeconomic frame, despite the monetary stability, can no longer be dedicated solely to the control of inflation targets.

Até o ano de 1964, o Brasil enfrentou sérias adversidades no campo econômico, não só pela ausência de tradição exportadora e cultural mas, também, pelas limitações da estrutura operacional do mercado de câmbio. Com o advento da Lei 4595, de 31.12.64, extingue-se a Sumoc, cria-se o Banco Central, estabelecem-se condições para o Banco do Brasil impulsionar as suas atividades comerciais e normatiza-se o funcionamento do mercado de capitais, circunstância que acenava como sinal dos novos tempos.De lá para cá, o país, a acompanhar a torrente dos tempos modernos, organizou o sistema financeiro nacional e empreendeu forte escalada na área internacional. A criação de agências bancárias no exterior estimulou o aprendizado de novos conhecimentos e a aquisição de técnicas operacionais sofisticadas, igualando-nos, no particular, às nações mais desenvolvidas do mundo. Tais aspectos são destacados no presente trabalho, inicialmente, por meio de uma abordagem do mercado de câmbio brasileiro, sua estrutura em termos organizacionais e o seu funcionamento em termos operacionais. De outra parte, ao relatarmos, de forma retrospectiva, a política cambial brasileira, desde a Segunda Guerra Mundial aos dias de hoje, enfatizamos as inúmeras tentativas de acerto na condução das políticas monetária e cambial, as quais sempre tiveram o propósito de debelar o processo inflacionário e o atingimento de superávits comerciais para aliviar o BP do país. Um assunto, no entanto, percorre toda a nossa análise e se constitui no tema central desta Dissertação: as taxas cambiais como produto de políticas cambiais equivocadas, a sua relação direta com as taxas de juros e os seus efeitos deletérios nas contas públicas. Neste ponto, procedemos a um estudo dos diversos planos econômicos implantados na economia, com destaque para o único que efetivamente teve sucesso na finalidade a que inicialmente se destinou: o Plano Real. A prática demonstrou, todavia, que há hoje um indisfarçável consenso sobre as inconsistências da atual política cambial, nossa dependência dos capitais externos e as dificuldades para desmontar a armadilha da sobrevalorização cambial e dos juros elevados. O atual arcabouço macroeconômico, a despeito da estabilidade monetária, não pode mais voltar-se apenas para o controle de metas de inflação. / Up until 1964, Brazil faced severe difficulties in the economic sphere, due not only to the absence of an exporting and cultural tradition but also to the limitations in the operational structure of its currency exchange market. When Law 4595 of 12.31.64 comes into force, Sumoc ceases to exist, Banco Central (Brazilian Central Bank) is created, the conditions necessary for Banco do Brasil to boost its activities are established and the operation of the stock becomes regulated, an event hailed as a sign of the new times. From then on, the country, in keeping with modern times, has organized the domestic financial system and inserted itself heavily in the international arena. The establishment of bank branches abroad has fostered the development of fresh knowledge and the acquisition of sophisticated operational techniques, bringing us to par, in this particular, with the most developed nations in the world. Such aspects are highlighted in this paper, initially, through an overview of the Brazilian exchange market, its organizational structure and operation. Then, as we retrospectively describe the Brazilian exchange policy from World War II up to the present, we emphasize the countless attempts at correctly adjusting the administration of monetary and exchange policies, which have always been aimed at subduing the inflationary process and reaching commercial surplus in order to alleviate the country's Balance of Payments. One subject, however, is present throughout our analysis and constitutes the central theme to this Dissertation: exchange rates as a product of misguided exchange policies, their direct correlation to interest rates and their adverse effects on public accounts. On that point, we carry out a study of the several economic plans implemented in the country, highlighting the only one to actually reach success regarding its initial goal: Plano Real (Real Plan). Nonetheless, experience has shown that there is currently a hardly concealable consensus on the inconsistencies in the present exchange policy, our dependence on foreign capital and the difficulties to free the country from the trap of currency exchange over appreciation and high interest rates. The current macroeconomic frame, despite the monetary stability, can no longer be dedicated solely to the control of inflation targets.

Magister Commercii - MCom / This paper tested the purchasing power parity hypothesis for Botswana and South Africa using cointegration analysis. The data used are the spot exchange rate between the two countries (rand and pula) and their consumer price indices. / South Africa

In this thesis, I undertake an empirical search for the existence of price and exchange rate bubbles during the inter-war European hyperinflations of Germany, Hungary and Poland. Since the choice of an appropriate policy to control inflation depends upon the true nature of the underlying process generating the inflation, the existence or non-existence of inflationary bubbles has important policy implications. If bubbles do exist, positive action will be required to counter the public's self-fulfilling expectation of a price surge. Hyperinflationary episodes have been chosen as my case study because of the dominant role that such expectations play in price determination. In the literature, there are frequently expressed concerns about empirical research into bubbles. The existence of model misspecification and the nonlinear dynamics in the fundamentals under conditions of regime switching may lead to spurious conclusions concerning the existence of bubbles. Furthermore, some stochastic bubbles may display different collapsing properties and consequently appear to be linearly stationary. Thus, the evidence against the existence of bubbles may not be reliable. In my thesis, I attempt to tackle the above empirical problems of testing for the existence of bubbles using advances in testing procedures and methodologies. Since the number of bubble solutions is infinite in the rational expectations framework, I adopt indirect tests, rather than direct tests, for the empirical study. From the findings of my empirical research, the evidence for stationary specification errors and the nonlinearity of the data series cannot be rejected, but the evidence for the existence of price and exchange rate bubbles is rejected for all the countries under study. It leads to the conclusion that the control of the inter-war European hyperinflations was attributable to control of the fundamental processes, since the dynamics of prices and exchange rates for these countries might not be driven by self-fulfilling expectations.

The foreign exchange market is one of the largest and most active financial markets with enormous daily trading volumes. Exchange rates are influenced by the interactions of a large number of agents, each operating with different intentions and on different time scales. This gives rise to nonlinear and non-stationary behaviour which complicates modelling. This research proposes a neural network based model trained on data filtered with a novel Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) filtering method for the forecasting of exchange rates. One minor and two major exchange rates are evaluated in this study. Firstly the ideal prediction horizons for trading are calculated for each of the exchange rates. The data is filtered according to this ideal prediction horizon using the EMD-filter. This EMD-filter dynamically filters the data based on the apparent number of intrinsic modes in the signal that can contribute towards prediction over the selected horizon. The filter is employed to filter out high frequency noise and components that would not contribute to the prediction of the exchange rate at the chosen timescale. This results in a clearer signal that still includes nonlinear behaviour. An artificial neural network predictor is trained on the filtered data using different sampling rates that are compatible with the cut-off frequency. The neural network is able to capture the nonlinear relationships between historic and future filtered data with greater certainty compared to a neural network trained on unfiltered data. Results show that the neural network trained on EMD-filtered data is significantly more accurate at prediction of exchange rates compared to the benchmark models of a neural network trained on unfiltered data and a random walk model for all the exchange rates. The EMD-filtered neural network’s predicted returns for the higher sample rates show higher correlations with the actual returns, and significant profits can be made when applying a trading strategy based on the predictions. Lower sample rates that just marginally satisfy the Nyquist criterion perform comparably with the neural network trained on unfiltered data; this may indicate that some aliasing occurs for these sampling rates as the EMD low-pass filter has a gradual cut-off, leaving some high frequency noise within the signal. The proposed model of the neural network trained on EMD-filtered data was able to uncover systematic relationships between the filtered inputs and actual outputs. The model is able to deliver profitable average monthly returns for most of the tested sampling rates and forecast horizons of the different exchange rates. This provides evidence that systematic predictable behaviour is present within exchange rates, and that this systematic behaviour can be modelled if it is properly separated from high frequency noise. / MIng (Computer and Electronic Engineering), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

The foreign exchange market is one of the largest and most active financial markets with enormous daily trading volumes. Exchange rates are influenced by the interactions of a large number of agents, each operating with different intentions and on different time scales. This gives rise to nonlinear and non-stationary behaviour which complicates modelling. This research proposes a neural network based model trained on data filtered with a novel Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) filtering method for the forecasting of exchange rates. One minor and two major exchange rates are evaluated in this study. Firstly the ideal prediction horizons for trading are calculated for each of the exchange rates. The data is filtered according to this ideal prediction horizon using the EMD-filter. This EMD-filter dynamically filters the data based on the apparent number of intrinsic modes in the signal that can contribute towards prediction over the selected horizon. The filter is employed to filter out high frequency noise and components that would not contribute to the prediction of the exchange rate at the chosen timescale. This results in a clearer signal that still includes nonlinear behaviour. An artificial neural network predictor is trained on the filtered data using different sampling rates that are compatible with the cut-off frequency. The neural network is able to capture the nonlinear relationships between historic and future filtered data with greater certainty compared to a neural network trained on unfiltered data. Results show that the neural network trained on EMD-filtered data is significantly more accurate at prediction of exchange rates compared to the benchmark models of a neural network trained on unfiltered data and a random walk model for all the exchange rates. The EMD-filtered neural network’s predicted returns for the higher sample rates show higher correlations with the actual returns, and significant profits can be made when applying a trading strategy based on the predictions. Lower sample rates that just marginally satisfy the Nyquist criterion perform comparably with the neural network trained on unfiltered data; this may indicate that some aliasing occurs for these sampling rates as the EMD low-pass filter has a gradual cut-off, leaving some high frequency noise within the signal. The proposed model of the neural network trained on EMD-filtered data was able to uncover systematic relationships between the filtered inputs and actual outputs. The model is able to deliver profitable average monthly returns for most of the tested sampling rates and forecast horizons of the different exchange rates. This provides evidence that systematic predictable behaviour is present within exchange rates, and that this systematic behaviour can be modelled if it is properly separated from high frequency noise. / MIng (Computer and Electronic Engineering), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

published_or_final_version / abstract / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Economics and Finance / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

In this research, we review the relevant literatures to discuss the predictability of foreign exchange rates. Besides, we collect literatures to examine the development of the fundamental models, market models, technical analysis and trading rules and compare and evaluate the precision of these models. Moreover, we make a case study of a global leading investment bank to discuss how to use these models in practice. The result shows that fundamental models can help to establish the long-term equilibrium but have some shortcomings and thus we could adopt market models to resolve the shortages and the technical analyses and rules to set the exact price levels for trading purposes.

M.Comm. / The fundamental objective of this paper is to effectively analise and forecast currency option volatility in the South African derivative market. The study of Dollar/Rand volatility is based in the domain of quantitative and international economics. It focuses on the monetary aspect of international finance, where currency volatility is of critical significance in the hedging of open currency option positions used in investment strategies as well as in active currency risk management. Topics covered in this study include firstly a theoretical discussion of option pricing and volatility to provide the necessary financial and statistical background: Advanced volatility issues are secondly addressed to define the volatility matrix and to explain the appearance of volatility smiles and cones as well as the characteristics of the time structure of volatility. The use of volatility as an important risk management tool is also depicted. Various time-series techniques such as the Box Jenkins methodology and decomposition of Dollar/Rand historical and implied volatility are assessed and used to forecast volatility. Univariate and multivariate regression analysis is in addition described and used to find the best estimate for subsequent Dollar/Rand volatility. Finally, the paper is concluded by an analysis of time varying stochastic volatility models such as the models for autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity. The techniques apply a regression on the variance and include a function to allow for the asymmetric nature of movements in Dollar/Rand volatility. Up to date, no formal in-depth academical research on high frequency currency volatility has been conducted in the South African derivative market. It is therefor crucial to research the unique characteristics of Dollar/Rand option volatility. If the study concludes that Dollar/Rand volatility is predictable, it will have important implications for currency option pricing and portfolio management. Investors seeking to avoid risk, may choose to adjust their portfolios by reducing their commitments to assets whose volatilities are predicted to increase, or by using dynamic diversification approaches to hedge predicted volatility increases. This is particularly true of currency derivative markets where the volatility of the underlying asset has a profound effect on the value of the derivative.