Note: This is not a particularly policy related post; just an interesting chart I want to present here.
Out at capitalmind, Deepak Shenoy writes that measured in US Dollars, the NSE Nifty has actually lost 8% in the last 6 years, a period in which the rupee value of the Nifty has gone up by 36%. This is on account of the depreciation of the Indian Rupee against the US Dollar.
Now, it would be interesting to see the volatility of the index as measured in the two currencies. Does the volatility in the USD/INR exchange rate add to the volatility of the Nifty or does it subtract from it? (note that when you multiply two volatile indices, the resultant can be less volatile than either of the components, if the components move in opposite directions).
As you can see from the following graph, the two volatilities actually add up, meaning the dollar volatility of the Nifty has for most part been much higher than the rupee volatility! And to add that the dollar returns have also been lower than the rupee returns. Makes you wonder why FIIs are still invested in India.
(please disregard the absolute values on the graph. In order to make the graph, I index both nifty and the dollar value of nifty to 100 on the first day of the time series I had and appropriately scaled down both series. The point to notice here is that in most parts the red line (dollar volatility) is above the blue line (rupee volatility). As earlier, I use 30-day quadratic variation as a measure of volatility )