The $9 Trillion Short That May Send the Dollar Even Higher

Investors speculating the dollar rally is fizzling out may be overlooking trillions of reasons why it will keep on going.

There’s pent-up demand for the U.S. currency that will underpin years of appreciation because the world is “structurally short” the dollar, according to investor and former International Monetary Fund economist Stephen Jen.

Sovereign and corporate borrowers outside America owe a record $9 trillion in the U.S. currency, much of which will need repaying in coming years, data from the Bank for International Settlements show.

In addition, central banks that had reduced their holdings of the greenback are starting to reverse course, creating more demand. The dollar’s share of global foreign reserves shrank to a record 60 percent in 2011 from 73 percent a decade earlier, though it’s since climbed back to 63 percent.

So, the short-term ebbs and flows caused by changes in Federal Reserve policy or economic data releases may be overwhelmed by these larger forces combining to fuel more appreciation, according to Jen, the London-based co-founder of SLJ Macro Partners LLP and the former head of currency research at Morgan Stanley.

Dollar ‘Power’

“Short-covering will continue to power the dollar higher,” said Jen, who predicts a 9 percent advance in the next three months to 96 cents per euro. “The dollar’s strength is not just about cyclical factors such as growth. The recent consolidation will likely prove to be temporary.”

Most strategists and investors agree on the reasons for the dollar’s advance versus each of its major counterparts during the past year: the prospect of higher U.S. interest rates while other nations are loosening policy.

Bloomberg’s Dollar Spot Index, which tracks the U.S. currency against 10 major peers including the euro and yen, has surged 20 percent since the middle of 2014. The gains stalled recently, sending the index down more than 3 percent in the three weeks through April 3, as Fed officials tempered investors’ expectations about the pace of rate increases.

Top Forecaster

Jen isn’t the only one who thinks short-dollar positions will cause the rally to extend.

Chris Turner, head of foreign-exchange strategy at ING Groep NV, sees the dollar surging through parity with the European currency by mid-year, from $1.0530 per euro as of 7:05 a.m. in New York. He said gains will be spurred by bonds from Germany to Ireland yielding below zero.

“Central banks are re-accumulating their dollar reserves and low, or negative, bond yields in the euro zone will probably speed up that trend,” said London-based Turner, whose bank topped Bloomberg’s rankings for the most accurate currency forecasts in the past two quarters.

Not everyone thinks the dollar will keep on climbing. Billionaire Bill Gross of Janus Capital Group Inc. called his contrarian bet against the greenback “the trade of the year.” His short is premised on the spread between U.S. and European interest rates narrowing.

Adrian Lee, whose eponymous investment company oversees more than $5 billion, disagrees. He points to monetary policy as the biggest driver of dollar strength as the tightening bias of the Fed contrasts with a European Central Bank that’s expanding the money supply.

Bloomberg

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