Romanian Equity Investments and Currency Risk: A Euro-Based Perspective

Abstract This paper assesses the benefits and risks of international investments made on the Romanian stock market, from the perspective of euro-based investors. We investigate the contribution of exchange rate volatility to the total risk of these investments over a period of nine years, between January 2011 and December 2019, by using monthly values for the exchange rate between the Romanian leu and Euro and monthly values of the Romanian stock index. Our findings indicate that, on average, Romanian leu depreciated against euro, causing currency losses for the euro-based investor, counterbalanced by the Romanian index mean return, higher than euro countries index mean return during the pe…