Volatility in the foreign-exchange market will stay near quarter-century lows this summer before a potential late-year “shock,” according to Deutsche Bank AG's Alan Ruskin.

“The market is extremely complacent, and we will get some sort of shock, probably in quarter four,” Ruskin, global head of Deutsche Bank's Group of 10 foreign exchange, said in an interview on Bloomberg Radio's “Surveillance” with Tom Keene and Michael McKee. “We'll see the kind of employment numbers, particularly the decline in the employment rate well below 6 percent, that are going to trigger a reconfiguration in terms of rate expectations.”

Implied volatility and realized volatility are at 25-year lows, Ruskin said, as investors gauge the Federal Reserve's pace of raising borrowing costs from the all-time low they have been at since 2008.

“The Fed is slowly approaching a tightening cycle from a point in which it's been historically extraordinarily accommodative and where it has been distorting the price of money,” Ruskin said. “It's probably best to keep one's powder dry and wait for that opportunity in two or three months.”

The best prospects for profit will come in shorting the front end of the curve—Treasury bills and notes with maturities less than five years—with the Fed increasing interest rates as soon as the second quarter of 2015 on jobs growth, Ruskin said. A short is a bet that prices will drop.

“The fact that the Fed will have to respond at some juncture means that, eventually, those shorts are going to make money,” Ruskin said.

Copyright 2018 Bloomberg. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to Treasury & Risk, part of your ALM digital membership.

Your access to unlimited Treasury & Risk content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:

  • Thought leadership on regulatory changes, economic trends, corporate success stories, and tactical solutions for treasurers, CFOs, risk managers, controllers, and other finance professionals
  • Informative weekly newsletter featuring news, analysis, real-world case studies, and other critical content
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical coverage of the employee benefits and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.