Skip to content

Risk-On / Risk-Off

A market-wide sentiment regime: risk-on favours growth-sensitive currencies, risk-off drives flows into havens like the yen and Swiss franc.

R

99 of 124 in Fundamentals

Risk-on / risk-off (often shortened to RoRo) describes the way markets swing between two broad moods. In risk-on phases, investors favour higher-yielding and growth-sensitive assets — equities, commodity currencies such as the Australian dollar, and emerging-market currencies. In risk-off phases, money rotates into assets perceived as safer, including the Japanese yen, the Swiss franc, the US dollar, and government bonds. For forex traders, the prevailing mood often matters as much as any single country's data, because whole groups of currencies move together when sentiment shifts. Traders gauge the regime by watching equity indices, volatility measures, and bond yields, and by noting whether safe-haven currencies are strengthening or weakening across the board.

Next step

Guide

How to Measure Risk Across All Your Open Positions

Risk per trade only describes one ticket. How to add up what your stops are worth, split the book into currencies, and read the margin figures the platform is already showing you.

Read the guide