intermarket carry trade using a currency swap?

CFA Level III
#1

So you need to received fixed/pay floating in the steeper curve and pay fixing/receiving floating in the flatter curve. I can’t find any logic to this. Any help is much appreciated!!

#2

  1. You want to receive fixed and pay floating on the steeper curve because that makes you money. Let’s say you make 3% on this trade.

  2. You want to pay fixed and receive float on the flat curve which actually loses you money. Let’s say you lose 1% on this trade.

  • The net of #1 and #2 is still positive if you picked your countries well and the curve pays out right. The reason you would do this is to be duration neutral. Of course if you werent concerned about duration, you would just implement #1 as #2 is a loser. You can view #2 as the hedge.
#3

Thanks 125mph for the explanation. Does this only work when the yield curve is expected to remain stable?

#4

Can someone expand on this? How is utilizing two swaps hedging? My confusion is this…

When we decide to do an inter-market carry trade…we are looking at two yield curves, and we decide that “okay, this market has a really low short term rate, while this other market has a really high long term rate. So let’s borrow in the cheaper rate of this market and invest way out in the long end of the other market”

So we do that. We borrow at A and invest in B- investing at the long end of the higher yielding market means that we are receiving fixed. MY CONFUSION- to get the funds to invest, we needed to borrow at A in the ST rate- so we are paying floating…right? or No.

I don’t really understand the dynamics behind it…if anyone could simply explain it, it would be a huge help