Forecasting disconnected exchange rates

The inability of empirical models to forecast exchange rates has given rise to the belief that exchange rates are disconnected from macroeconomic fundamentals. This paper addresses the potential disconnect by endogenously selecting forecast models from a broad set of fundamentals. The procedure shows that exchange rates are not disconnected from fundamentals, but fundamentals vary in their predictive content at different forecast horizons and for different currencies. Performing model selection out-of-sample is challenging. At short horizons, the method cannot outperform a random walk, although the performance is improved at long horizons. These findings are confirmed across currencies and forecast evaluation methods.