This work studies the information content of trades in the world’s largest over-the-counter (OTC) market, the foreign exchange (FX) market. It analyzes a novel, comprehensive order flow data set, distinguishing among different groups of market participants and covering a large cross-section of currency pairs. We find compelling evidence of heterogeneous superior information across agents, time, and currency pairs, consistent with the asymmetric information theory and OTC market fragmentation. A trading strategy based on the permanent price impact, capturing asymmetric information risk, generates high returns even after accounting for risk, transaction cost, and other common risk factors shown in the FX literature.

We devise a simple model of liquidity demand and supply to study dealers’ liquidity provision in currency markets . Drawing on a globally representative data set of currency trading volumes, we show that at times when dealers’ intermediation capacity is constrained the cost of liquidity provision increases disproportionately relative to dealer-intermediated volume. Consequently, the otherwise strong and positive relation between liquidity costs and trading volume diminishes significantly when dealers face tighter Value-at-Risk limits or higher funding costs. Using various econometric approaches, we show that this nonlinear effect of dealer constraints on market liquidity primarily stems from a reduction in the elasticity of liquidity supply, rather than changes in liquidity demand.

We show that US monetary policy is transmitted internationally through the factor structure of exchange rates. Following an easing of monetary policy, investment funds sell safe and buy risky currencies. Global US banks, similarly, tilt their distribution of foreign loan origination toward currencies with greater systematic currency risk. The effects of monetary policy on currency flows and loans persist for several months and feed into the leverage and real investment decisions of firms and, in particular, those that operate using a high-risk currency. We conclude that the risk factor exposure of currencies is a significant channel through which we can understand the international transmission of US monetary policy.