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Currency
Market Analyst Par Excellence: Avinash Persaud |
If you want to know what is going to happen in the currency market, it pays to watch what Avinash Persaud is up to. That, at least is the view of the major financial publications world wide, all of which quote Mr. Persaud as an authority.
Avinash Persaud is Managing Director and Global Head of Research for the Global Markets Group of State Street Bank and Trust Company. in England. State Street is the world's foremost provider of financial services to institutional investors, handling close to 12% of the world's securities under custody and almost $800bn under management.
Persaud, 34, is routinely described as one of the world's leading experts in global markets research and is a top ranked analyst in Global Finance and Global Investor surveys of currency research. According to The Financial Times, his work on investors' shifting appetite for risk has entered the popular lexicon of investment analysis. Persaud, has won the major awards in international finance including the Jacques de Larosiere Award from the Institute of International Finance and an Amex Bank Award.
During 2000/2001, Persaud is the first private-sector, Visiting Scholar, of the IMF. He is also non-Executive Director of the Overseas Development Institute. Prior to joining State Street in 1999, Persaud was Head of Currency Research at JP Morgan.
Mr Persaud, one of the highest profile currency analysts in the City, won plaudits for various analytical and portfolio models which he developed at J.P. Morgan. Of these, the two most widely used were the Emu Calculator and the Risk Appetite Index. The Emu Calculator estimated the chances of success for countries which hoped to join the first wave of European monetary union. The Risk Appetite Index estimated much broader i
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demand for risky investments.Mr. Persaud is perhaps best known for the work he's done in measuring individuals' willingness to assume market risks. At Morgan, he designed a "risk-appetite index," which quantifies investors' shift very risk-averse; but three days down the road, those same investors might become very risk-loving," he said. "That has a major impact on all financial markets, not just currencies."
Other innovations developed by Mr. Persaud and his team at Morgan included a tool to measure the likelihood of a currency crash in emerging markets; when most people were dismissing the notion of a ruble collapse, the forecasting device predicted a Russian devaluation four months before one occurred. They also built the "regime machine," which gauged which macro-economic factors and behavioral sentiments were most influencing currency movements at a given point in time, and they also built a mechanism that weighed the likelihood of European economic and monetary union occurring and the odds of which countries would participate. ;
Persaud is a graduate of the London School of Economics. He is a Fellow, of The Royal Society of Arts, a Patron of The Tate Gallery and a former Governor of the London School of Economics (1988-1989). He was also recently appointed Non-Eecutive Director & Member of the Finance Committee of IndiaCares (forthcoming)
Born in Barbados the 32 year old genius holds dual Barbadian and British citizenship.
Like many of his fellow West Indians, he is an avid cricket fan, who once explained the sport's popularity among people from former British colonies as "the only way to get back at the Empire."
Another "pastime" involves "looking at how my expertise in currency markets can influence policy in countries." Amid the currency turmoil that engulfed Asia and Russia, Mr. Persaud spent part of last year advising emerging countries on how best to avoid currency crashes.