In March, I wondered aloud about whether the New Zealand Dollar might be the most overvalued currency in the world. Since then, it has continued its unlikely ascent, rising 10% on a correlation-weighted basis and 3% against the US Dollar, hitting a 26-year high in the process. While there are signs that the New Zealand economy might be able to withstand an expensive currency, at some point, the chickens must come back to roost.

Surely the expensive kiwi must be wreaking havoc on the New Zealand dollar? “How is New Zealand supposed to rebalance its economy away from consumption, importing, borrowing and asset selling towards investment, production, exporting and asset buying when our currency is headed for record highs?” Wonders one commentator. In fact, exporters are coping just fine, and New Zealand just recorded its highest quarterly trade surplus on record. Never mind that this is due almost entirely to soaring prices for commodities and unflagging demand. In spite of two earthquakes and other related downside factors, the New Zealand economy is nonetheless forecast to grow by 2.3% in 2011.

On the other hand, New Zealand’s current account deficit continues to rise, as foreign investors pour in to New Zealand to make acquisitions, portfolio investment, and loans to the government. New Zealand’s largest dairy conglomerate could soon be sold to Chinese investors, while China’s sovereign wealth fund (which manages a portion of the country’s sprawling forex reserves) has announced plans to purchase a big chunk of New Zealand government debt. This is just as well, since a record 2011 budget deficit will require a significant issuance of new debt.

Meanwhile, New Zealand price inflation is currently 4.5%, which means that the country’s real interest rate is -2%, certainly among the lowest in the world. Moreover, even as two-year inflation expectations tick up, rate hike expectations remain unchanged. The consensus is that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand will avoid hiking its benchmark until the first quarter of 2012. Regardless of what happens in the interim, it seems unlikely that Bank president Alan Bollard will give in, for fear of stoking further speculative interest in a currency that is already “undesirably high.”

Let’s review: record low interest rates and record low real interest rates. Record budget deficit. Large current account deficit. Declining expectations for GDP growth. Record high New Zealand Dollar. Does anyone see a contradiction here? It’s no wonder that the IMF recently speculated that the Kiwi might be overvalued by as much as 20%, echoing the sentiments of yours truly.

At the same time, commentators concede that “The New Zealand dollar or any currency can deviate for a long period of time from academic measures of valuation.” And that is why making fundamental bets on currencies is so difficult. Even if all signs point to down (as is basically the case here), a currency can continue rising for many more months, before suffering a massive correction. For what it’s worth, this is the fate that the New Zealand Dollar is resigned to. Whether it will happen tomorrow or next year, alas, will depend more on global macroeconomic factors (such as the ebb and flow of risk aversion) than on what happens in New Zealand.

According to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal, high-speed traders are quickly establishing themselves as the main force in forex markets. Just like in other financial markets, a significant portion of trading volume is dominated by computerized trading, in which huge blocks of currency can change hands multiple times in mere milliseconds. While this is certainly old news for hedge funds and other institutional traders, it may come as a slight surprise to retail traders, many of whom still see forex as the neglected stepsister of stocks, bonds, and other assets. Nonetheless, there are a number of implications for the forex markets, and retail traders would be wise to heed them.

Here are the facts: “High-frequency trading accounted for roughly 30% of all foreign-exchange flows, as of 2010, compared with 13% in 2004, according to Boston-based consulting firm Aite Group. (By contrast, 66% of global stocks trading is high frequency.” According to Aite Group, it will jump to 42% by the end 2011 and to 60% in 2012. “About 85% of the currency market’s growth in volume from 2007 to 2010 came from financial institutions like hedge funds [represented as other financial institutions in the chart below] rather than Wall Street’s traditional bank currency dealers, thanks partly to high-frequency traders.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, this is changing the way in which currencies are traded. Previously, for big blocks of currency, traders would have to manually request a quote from Wall Street brokerages, which still dominate forex trading through the interbank market. The brokerage would match up buyer and seller (or step in and fulfill one of the roles itself) and take a cut, in the form of the spread. Retail traders, on the other hand, have never known such a troublesome process, having always been afforded electronic quotes and instant execution. However, the price paid for this convenience comes in the form of wide spreads, since both your retail broker and its representative on the interbank markets must both earn a profit.

In fact, wide spreads recently came under attack by Karl Deninger and sparked a fierce debate about whether it is still possible for retail traders to turn a profit using high-frequency (albeit non-computerized) trading methods. Fortunately, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that spreads have already fallen to one pip (though it didn’t specify the currency pair) thanks to new systems that have been set up to cater to high-frequency traders. It seems only a matter of time before these systems are either adapted to the retail market and/or replace the interbank market as the market-maker for retail brokerages. (Given that a handful of banks are currently under investigation by the SEC for deceptive quoting practices, a changing of the guard probably isn’t such a bad thing!)

In addition, while high-frequency trading has increased liquidity and lowered spreads, it has probably increased volatility. Sudden spikes quickly becomes exacerbated as automatic stop orders flood the market. You can see from the chart below the abundance of such spikes, the most recent one on March 11 caused by the Japanese natural disasters. Overall volatility is also at elevated levels, though it’s impossible to know how much of this is due to an increase in high-frequency trading and how much is simply due to post-financial crisis uncertainty. In any event, retail traders with ultra-short time horizons have no choice but to play the same game, by maintaining active stop-loss orders. Traders should also consider reducing leverage, since sudden spikes can trigger margin calls and wipe out entire accounts. (For the record, of the dozens of interviews I have conducted over the last couple years, I have yet to find one expert that condones the use of leverage greater than 5:1.In my opinion, leverage is still nothing more than a cynical marketing tool), but I digress…)

Ultimately, I think this is just further evidence that day-trading forex is only going to become more difficult. According to a research paper (that I spotlighted in an earlier post), algorithmic trading has already caused a decline in the power of technical analysis. Presumably, this is because computerized trading systems are better than humans at identifying trends and faster at executing trades designed to profit from them. In the end, outsmarting computers is unlikely, since both human traders and their electronic counterparts use the same forms of deductive reasons to spot potential trading opportunities. At the same time, the algorithms are still “stupid.” They are designed by humans and can only consider the variables that have been inputted them, which are inherently technical in nature. To beat them, you merely have to beat their human designers. In practice, this probably means designing more creative strategies based on more complex analytical tools and/or considering fundamental factors in addition to technical ones.

This month, the Swiss Franc touched a record high against not one, but two currencies: the US dollar and the Euro. Having risen by more than 30% against the former and 20% against the latter, the franc might just be the world’s best performing currency over the last twelve months. Let’s look at the prospects for continued appreciation.

As I wrote on Monday, the Swiss Franc has been one of the primary beneficiaries of the safe haven trade. With each spike in volatility, the Swiss Franc has ticked upward. Due to monetary and fiscal stability as well as political conservatism, investors have flocked to the Franc in times of crisis. Of course, the Japanese Yen (and the US dollar, of late) has also received a boost from this phenomenon, but to a lesser extent than the franc, as you can see from the chart above.

Personally, I wonder if this isn’t because the Swiss economy is significantly smaller than that of Japan and the US. In other words, its capacity to absorb risk-averse capital inflows is much smaller than that of Japan and the US. For example, the impact of one million people suddenly rushing out to buy shares in IBM stock would have a much smaller impact on its share price compared to a sudden speculative flood into FXCM. The same can be said about the franc, relative to the dollar and yen.

Ironically, the franc is also rising because of regional proximity to the eurozone. I use the term ironic to denote in order to signify that the franc is not being buoyed by positive association with the euro but rather because of contradistinction. In other words, each time there is another flareup in the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, the franc typically experiences the biggest bounce because it is the easiest currency to compare with the euro. In some ways, it is basically just a more secure version of the euro. This phenomenon has intensified over the last month, as the euro faces perhaps its most uncertain test yet.

It is curious that even as investors have gradually become more inclined to take risk, that not only has the franc held its value, but it has actually surged! Perhaps this is because it is expected that the Swiss National Bank (SNB) will soon hike interest rates, making the franc both high-yielding and secure. To be sure, some analysts think that the SNB will hike as soon as June. The fact the the economy has continued to expand and exports have surged in spite of the strong franc only seems to support this notion.

On the other hand, inflation is still basically nil. And just because the Swiss economy can withstand an interest rate hike hardly provides adequate justification for implementing one. Besides, the SNB hardly wants to give the markets further cause to buy the franc. If anything, it may even need to intervene verbally to make sure that it doesn’t rise any higher. Thus, “The median forecast among economists is for a rate increase in September.”

In short, I think the franc is overbought against the dollar. In fact, you can see from the most recent Commitment of Traders data that speculators have been net long the franc for almost an entire year, and it seems inevitable that this will need to reverse itself. On the other hand, the franc probably has more room to rise against the euro. The takeaway here is that it is less important to know where you stand on the franc in general and more important to understand the cross currency.