Report Archive - Radhika Kamath

  • China's Forex Reserves Hit a Historic High
    Do Rising Reserves Imply that the RMB Is Undervalued?
  • 11-Nov-2009

  • China’s foreign exchange reserves reached a record high of $ 2.27 trillion in Q3 2009, equivalent to about 50% of the country’s GDP, prompting questions about currency undervaluation. By examining historical data on China’s forex reserves, balance of payments, exports, and RMB/USD exchange rates, our analyses shed light on the major sources of the build-up in reserves, the high correlation between annual increases in BoP surpluses and forex reserves, and the major drivers of BoP surpluses. Further, using a relative purchasing power parity approach, our results indicate that the RMB is currently undervalued by about 4%.

  • Regions: China
  • Authors: Radhika Kamath
  • Products: Datastream
  • Keywords: currency, foreign exchange
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  • Why Gold Shines vs. Other Commodities
    How To Analyze Currency-Adjusted Gold Trends Using Datastream
  • 27-Mar-2009

  • One way to judge the relative worth of gold is to compare it and other commodities in terms of a currency index, removing currency fluctuations from both prices. We used trade-weighted dollars. Shown this way, the price of gold and gold’s price change versus other commodity prices gives a view of inflation expectations. We used Thomson Reuters Datastream to compare currency-adjusted gold with a similarly adjusted CRB commodity index. This view indicates that gold is at a greater price extreme relative to other commodities than it was in the early 1980s, near the end of a decade-long bull run for the metal.

  • Regions: Global
  • Authors: Radhika Kamath
  • Products: Datastream
  • Keywords: gold
  • Download full report pdf_small

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