User:FerhatBilgin

Hot Money is a term that is most commonly used in financial markets to refer to the flow of funds (or capital) from one country to another in order to earn a short-term profit on interest rate differences and/or anticipated exchange rate shifts. These speculative capital flows are called “hot money” because they can move very quickly in and out of markets, potentially leading to market instability.

Illustration of Hot Money Flow
The following simple example would roughly illustrate the phenomenon of hot money: In the beginning of 2011, the national average rate of one year certificate of deposit in the U.S. is 0.95%. In contrast, China's benchmark one year deposit rate is 3%. And it is widely believed that Chinese currency (Yuan) is seriously undervalued against world's major trading currencies and therefore would appreciate against the U.S. dollar in the coming years. Given this situation, if an investor in the U.S. deposits his/her money in a Chinese bank, the investor would get a higher return than that in the situation in which he/she deposits money in a U.S. bank. This makes China a prime target for hot money inflow. This is just an example for illustration. In reality, hot money takes many different forms of investment

Furthermore, the following vivid description of hot money help further illustrate this phenomemon: "one country or sector in the world economy experiences a financial crisis; capital flows out in a panic; investors seek more attractive destination for their money. In the next destination, capital inflows create a boom that is accompanied by rising indebtness, rising asset prices and booming consumption-for a time. But all too often, these capital inflows are followed by another crisis. Some commentators describe these pattern of capital flow as “hot money” that flows from one sector or country to the next and leaves behind a trail of destruction."

Types of Hot Money
As mentioned above, capital in the following form could be considered hot money: The types of capital in the above categories share common characteristics: investment horizon is short; they can come in quickly and leave quickly.
 * Short-term foreign portfolio investments, including investments in equities, bonds and financial derivatives
 * Short-term foreign bank loans
 * Foreign bank loans with short term investment horizon

Estimating the Hot Money
There is no well-defined method for estimating the amount of “hot money” flowing into a country during a period of time, because “hot money” flows quickly and is poorly monitored. In addition, once an estimate is made, the amount of “hot money” may suddenly rise or fall, depending on the economic conditions driving the flow of funds. One common way of approximating the flow of “hot money” is to subtract a nation’s trade surplus (or deficit) and its net flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) from the change in the nation’s foreign reserves.

Hot Money (approx) = Change in foreign exchange reserves - Net exports - Net foreign direct investment

Sources and Causes of Hot Money Flow
Hot money is usually originated from the capital rich, developed countries that have lower GDP growth rate and lower interest rates compared to the GDP growth rate and interest rate of emerging market economies such as India, Brazil, China, Turkey, Malaysia etc. Although the specific causes of hot money flow is somewhat different from period to period, but generally, the following could be considered as the causes of hot money flow :
 * sustained decline of interest rates in the highly industrialized, developed countries. The lower interest rates in the developed nations attract investors to the high investment yields and improving economics prospects in Asia and Latin America.
 * general trend toward international diversification of investments in major financial centers and toward growing integration of of world capital markets.
 * emerging market countries began to adopt sound monetary and fiscal policies as well as market-oriented reforms including trade and capital market liberalization. Such policy reforms, among others, have resulted in credible increase in the rate of return on investments.

As described above, hot money can be in different forms. Hedge funds, other portfolio investment funds and international borrowing of domestic financial institutations are generally considered as the vehicles of hot money. In the 1997 East Asian Financial Crisis and in the 1998 Russian Financial Crises, the “hot money” chiefly came from banks, not portfolio investors.

Impact of the Hot Money
Capital flows from rich and developed world to developing and emerging market countries should be welcomed. Because foreign capitals can finance investment and stimulate economic growth, thus helping increase the standard of living in the developing world. Capital flows can increase welfare by enabling households to smooth out their consumption over time and achieve higher level of consuption. Capital flows can help developed countries achieve a better international diversification of thier portfolios. However, large and sudden inflows of capital with short term investment horizon have negative macroeconomic effects, including rapid monetary expansion, inflationary pressures, real exchange rate appreciation and widening current account deficits. The following are the details of the dangers that hot money presents to the receiving country's economy:


 * inflow of massive capital with short invesment horizon (hot money) could fuel inflation. The sudden inflow of large amounts of foreign money would increase the monetary base of the receiving country, which would help create credit boom. This, in turn, would result in such a situation in which "too much money chase too few goods". Consequences of this would be inflation.
 * sudden inflow of short term capital (hot money)could lead the exchange rate appreciation or even cause exchange rate overshooting. And if this exchange rate appreciation persists, it would hurt the competitiveness of respective country's export sector by making the country's exports more expensive compared to similar foreign goods and services.
 * the sudden outflow of hot money, which would alway certainly happen, would cause the collapse of the value of the country's currency. This is especially so in countries with relatively scarce internationally liquid assets. There is growing agreement that this was the case in the 1997 East Asian Financial Crisis. In the run-up to the crises, firms and private firms in South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia accumulated large amounts of short term foreign debt (a type of hot money). The three countries shared a common characterestic of having large ratio of short term foreign debt to international reserves. When the capital starts to flow out, it caused a collapse in asset prices and exchange rates. The financial panic fed on itself causing foreign creditors to call in loans and depositors withdraw funds from banks, all of these magnified the illiquidity of the domestic financial system and forced yet another round of costly asset liquadations and price deflation. In all of the three countries, the domestic financial institutions came to the brink of default on their external short term obligations.

However, some economists and financial experts argue that hot money could also play positive role in countries that have relatively low level of foriegn exchange reserves, because the capital inflow may present a useful opportunity for those countries to augment their central banks' reverve holdings.

Controlling the Hot Money
Generally speaking, given their relatively high interest rates compared with that of the developed market economies, emerging market economies are the destionation of hot money. Although the    emerging market countries welcome capital inflows such as foreign direct investment, but because of hot money's negative effects on the economy, they are instituting different policies to stop the "hot money" from coming into their country and to eliminate the effects of the hot money.

Different countries are using different method to prevent massive influx of hot money. The following are the main methods of dealing with hot money.


 * Exchange rate appreciation: exchange rate could be used as a tool to control the inflow of hot money. If exchange rate is beleived to be undervalued, that would be a cause of hot money inflow. In such circumstance, economists usually suggest a significant one-off appreciation rather than gradual move in foreign exchange. Because gradual appreciation of the exchange rate would attract even more hot money into the country. One downside of this approach is that exchange rate appreciation would reduce the competitiveness of the export sector.
 * Interest rate reduction: countries that adopt this policy would lower their central cank's benchmark interest rates to reduce the incentive for inflow. For example, on December 16, 2010, the Turkish Central Bank surprised markets by cutting interest rates at the time of rising inflation and relatively high economic growth. Erdem Basci, deputy bank governor of Turkish Central Bank argued that gradual rate cuts were the best way to prevent excessive capital inflows fuelling asset bubbles and currency appreciation . On February 14, 2011, Mehmet Simsek, the Turkish Finance Minister said: “more than $8 billion in short-term investment had exited country after the central bank cut rates and took steps to slow credit growth. The markets have got the message that Turkey does not want hot money inflows”


 * Administrative control on capital inflows:some policies of capital control adopted by China belong to this category. For example, In China: the government does not allow foreign funds directly invest in its capital market. Also, the central bank of China sets quotas for its domestic financial institutions for the use of short-term foreign debt and prevent banks from overusing their quotas . In June of 1991, Chilean government instituted a nonrenumerated (non-paid) 20 percent reserve requirement to be deposited at the Central Bank for a period of one year for liabilities in foreign currency, for firms which are borrowing directly in foreign currency, a.


 * Increasing bank reserve requirements and sterilization: some countries pursue fixed exchange rate policy. In the face of large net capital inflow, those countries would intervene in the foreign exchange market to prevent exchange rate appreciation. Then sterilize the monetary impact of intervention through open market operations and through increasing bank reserve requirements . For example, when hot money originated from the U.S. enters China, investors would sell U.S. dollars and buy Chinese yuan in the foreign exchange market. This would put upward pressure on the value of Chinese yuan. In order to prevent the appreciation of the Chinese currency, the central bank of China print Chinese yuan to buy U.S. dollars. This would increase money supply in China, which would in turn cause inflation. Then, central bank of China has to increase bank reserve requirements or issue Chinese government bonds to bring back the money that it has previouly released into the market in the exchange rate intervention operation. However, like other approaches, this approach has limitations. The first, the central bank can't keep increasing bank reserves, because doing so would negatively affect bank's profitability. The second, in the emerging market economies, the domestic financial market is not deep enough for open market operations to be effective.
 * Fiscal tightening: the idea is to use fiscal restraint, especially in the form of spending cuts on nontradables, so as to lower aggregate demand and curb the inflationary impact of capital inflow.

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