Finding The Right Themes For Retail Investors

摘要

The carry trade - investing in high-yielding currencies with borrowed dollars or yen - was the dominant - theme among FX investors in the boom years. But as emerging market currencies sold off heavily in the second half of 2008, structurers put their carry trade products on ice - at least until the heavy capital repatriation to the US and Japan eases, and attention returns instead to their rock-bottom interest rates. In the meantime, principle protection has become the priority for anxious retail investors. Among SGCIB's warrants range, currency warrants that allow investors to buy listed call or put options with strictly limited downside flourished in the later months of 2008. "The sense we have from intermediaries is that whereas day traders dominated before, there are now more high net worth clients using this product as a long-term investment to hedge, for example, their real estate exposures in more than one country," says Isabelle Braly-Cartillier, head of northern European structured and listed products marketing at SGCIB.