COVERED INTEREST ARBITRAGE

Investment strategy in which investor employs a forward contract to hedge against exchange rate risk. It uses favorable interest rate differentials to invest in a higher-yielding currency, and hedges the exchange perils through a forward currency contract. This is feasible if the cost of hedging the exchange risk is lower than the additional return generated by investing in a higher yielding currency. An investor who employs this strategy makes sport and forward market transactions at the same time, seeking to obtain riskless profit by combining currency pairs.