On the risk premium in Nordic electricity futures prices

This paper examines empirically the relationship between electricity spot and futures prices, by analysing a decade of data for a set of short term-to-maturity futures contracts traded in the Nordic Power Exchange. It is found that, on average, there are significant positive risk premiums in short-term electricity futures prices. The significance and size of the premiums, however, varies seasonally over the year; whereas it is greatest during winter, it is zero in summer. It is also found that time-varying risk premiums are significantly related to unexpectedly low reservoir levels. Furthermore, before the unprecedented supply-shock that hit the market around the end of year 2002, the risk premiums were related to the variance and the skewness of future spot prices.     

异质信念、投机均衡与农产品期货定价*

农产品期货市场套利并不充分,交易者也不是完全理性的。本文假设农产品期货市场有限套利、交易者异质信念并遵循“经验法则”预期,构建了农产品期货投机均衡定价模型,并认为集中竞价规则下产生的农产品期货价格是由交易者的预期决定的;前期期货价格水平、现货价格和前期期货价格的变动趋势、不同类型交易者的比例结构及其预期模式共同影响农产品期货价格的形成与波动;基本分析法交易者占主导地位的农产品期货市场具有更高的套期保值与价格发现效率。针对中国七种主要农产品期货的实证结果显示,农产品期货投机均衡定价模型对解释中国农产品期货价格的形成与波动是有效的。这意味着在期货行情系统中实时披露现货价格信息,培育和引导交易者运用基本分析法预测期货价格走势,有助于提升农产品期货市场的效率。     

A frequency domain causality investigation between futures and spot prices of Indian commodity markets

This paper examines the direction, strength and extent of causal relationship between futures and spot prices of Indian commodity markets using frequency domain approach of Breitung and Candelon (2006). Frequency domain analysis offers an effective alternative tool by examining the causality in frequency domain, whereas in traditional econometric causality analysis tools focus only on the time domain. Daily futures and spot price series on eight commodities from the Indian commodity exchanges (MCX and NCDEX) were examined for the period 3rd January, 2008 to 31st December, 2012. The results of frequency domain analysis suggest that there is a strong uni-directional relationship from futures to spot in almost all the selected commodities. This indicates that futures market has a powerful price discovery function in all the selected commodities; which in turn indicates the efficiency of Indian commodity futures market.     

Market efficiency in agricultural futures markets

Market efficiency and unbiasedness are tested in four agricultural commodity futures markets - live cattle, hogs, corn, and soybean meal - using cointegration and error correction models with GQARCH-in-mean processes. Results indicate each market is unbiased in the long run, although cattle, hogs and corn futures markets exhibit short-run inefficiencies and pricing biases. Models for cattle and corn outperform futures prices in out-of-sample forecasting. Results also suggest short-run time-varying risk premiums in cattle and hog futures markets.     

Bad volatility is not always bad: evidence from the commodity markets

ABSTRACT

Using exchange-traded fund (ETF) options data, we examine the predictive power of variance risk premium on returns of four commodities: crude oil, natural gas, gold and silver. We also analyze the predictive power of upside and downside variance risk premiums using a decomposition model conditional on the direction of the underlying market movement. We find that both the undecomposed and decomposed variance risk premiums are able to predict commodity prices. The decomposed variance risk premiums, however, outperform the undecomposed premium. The importance of upside and downside variance risk premiums differs across markets, related to hedging demand. In energy markets, both upside and downside premiums have strong predictive power, while in precious metal markets, only the upside premium is predictive.     

Which types of commodity price information are more useful for predicting US stock market volatility?

This study aims to investigate which types of commodity price information are more useful for predicting US stock market realized volatility (RV) in a data-rich word. The standard predictive regression framework and monthly RV data are used to explore the RV predictability of commodity futures for the next-month RV on S&P 500 spot index. We utilize principal component analysis (PCA) and factor analysis (FA) to extract the common factors for each type and all types of commodity futures. Our results indicate that the futures volatility information of grains and softs has a significant predictive ability in forecasting the RV of the S&P 500. In addition, the FA method can yield better forecasts than the PCA and average methods in most cases. Further analysis shows that the volatility information of grains and softs exhibits higher informativeness during recessions and pre-crises. Finally, the forecasts of the five combination methods and different out-of-sample periods confirm our results are robust.     

NEGATIVE CORRELATION BETWEEN STOCK AND FUTURES RETURNS: AN UNEXPLOITED HEDGING OPPORTUNITY?

The negative correlation between equity and commodity futures returns is widely perceived by investors as an unexploited hedging opportunity. A Lucas (1982) asset‐pricing model is adapted to analyse the fundamentals driving equity and commodity futures returns. Using the model we argue that such a negative correlation could arise as an equilibrium relationship which reflects traders' perceptions about the shocks driving the fundamentals such as energy and consumables, and does not necessarily indicate any hedging opportunity.     

Futures markets and commodity options: Hedging and optimality in incomplete markets

This paper examines the allocational roles of futures markets and commodity options in multi-good and multi-period economies. In a continuous-time model with time-additive utilities and homogeneous beliefs, trading in “unconditional” futures contracts, the market portfolio and a riskless asset gives any Pareto-optimal allocation. Individuals' optimal holdings of futures contracts in the continuous-time model are related to their consumption bundles and to their risk tolerances. It is shown that both hedging and “reverse hedging” behavior are possible. In the general model with discrete trading, options on portfolios of commodity options are shown to permit any unconstrained Pareto-optimal allocation.     

Does economic policy uncertainty matter for commodity market in China? Evidence from quantile regression

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on China’s agricultural and metal commodity futures returns across quantiles. We address this issue using the panel quantile regression approach, which allows for a more complete analysis of various conditions in the commodity market (i.e. bearish, normal, and bullish markets). Our empirical results reveal that domestic EPU shocks have a significantly negative effect on agricultural futures returns in bearish markets and a significantly positive effect on metal futures returns in bullish markets. The impacts of both domestic and U.S. EPU shocks on commodity markets are heterogeneous across quantiles and are sector specific. Additionally, by isolating positive and negative EPU shocks, the regression and test results indicate an asymmetric response of commodity futures prices in bullish markets. Moreover, our findings indicate that the metal futures market has a higher financialisation level than the agricultural futures market. The findings can be utilized by policymakers and investors.     

On the comparison of Schwartz and Smith’s two- and three-factor models on commodity prices

Since Schwartz and Smith (2000) published their study on two-factor model on commodity prices, many studies have used this model and others have extended it. The authors also proposed the three-factor model due to the poor fitting of the two-factor one on long-term futures prices. At that time the authors had only long-term prices from a private source to calibrate, test and compare these models. No public data on long-term future contracts were available. On the other hand, during the last decade the commodity prices soared as did the liquidity of long-term contracts. This means that the interest of the agents in the management of their risk on long-term positions increased the same way and this is the motivation for this study. In this article, we revisit the comparison between two- and three-factor models using public data for short- and long-term contracts (we use up to the 67-month-ahead contract). We also provide a detailed derivation of the three-factor model differently from that of the original article. Following the original article of Schwartz and Smith, we used oil futures prices traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange to calibrate the model. The results show a better fit of the three-factor model for the term structure of prices and volatilities mainly for long maturities contracts, while the two-factor model in most portions of the curve underestimates the risk premiums. This type of analysis is important not only for daily agents negotiating the physical commodities through long-term contracts but also for investment decisions on development of real projects.     

我国期货价格风险管理研究——基于VaR方法与GARCH-t模型的视角

本文利用我国商品期货及金融期货2010年9月份合约数据采用VaR方法对其收益率序列的波动性进行了检验。研究结果发现:首先,应用GARCH-t模型的方法对期货商品的价格风险进行管理具有显著的有效性和适用性,特别是在95%的置信水平下对收益率波动性的拟合效果最佳,同时该方法对期货商品正收益率的拟合效果比负收益率更好。其次,我国股指期货正式推出后,收益率波动性较模拟交易时期显著变小,表明改进后的交易制度及政府监管等措施可能限制了市场上的过度投机行为。最后,农副产品期货的风险暴露程度比股指、金属和能源化工等期货品种要小。     

Financialization of agricultural commodities: Evidence from China

Speculation in the commodity futures market distorts commodity prices, driving them away from rational levels. This phenomenon, which is known as the financialization of commodities, has raised significant concerns in recent years. Particularly, in the agricultural market, ‘financialized’ commodities have been blamed for high world food prices. In this paper, we examine the financialization of agricultural commodities in China. To do so, a time-varying copula is employed to investigate the dependence structure between commodities and stock markets. Four insightful results are obtained. First, positive correlations between agricultural commodities and stock markets demonstrate the financialization of agricultural commodities. Second, the identified correlations are time-varying and idiosyncratic with respect to products. Third, the agricultural commodity market is more closely correlated with the domestic stock market than with the overseas market. Fourth, a growing dependence between commodities and the stock markets is detected and the co-movement became stronger after the global financial crisis.     

我国商品期货价格指数与宏观经济指标关系的实证研究简

通过考察我国商品期货价格指数与主要宏观经济变量之间的相互影响关系,发现商品期货价格指数对物价、国内生产总值、利率、人民币汇率均有明显的引导作用和直接影响,并且能够领先CPI指标约5-7个月。商品期货价格指数作为CPI的先行指标具有一定的可行性。     

商品期货对资产配置的风险分散价值研究

基于BEKK-GARCH模型,本文考察了我国部分商品期货品种与股价指数收益率之间条件相关系数的动态变化特征,结果表明:商品期货与股价指数收益率之间存在较低的相关性;一些商品期货品种价格与股价指数的市场相关性呈长期减弱的趋势;而且,两者之间的相关性随股票市场波动率的增大而下降,股市波动幅度越大,商品期货与股价指数之间的相关性越低;这些都意味着商品期货对于资产配置有较好的风险分散价值。     

Realized volatility transmission: The role of jumps and leverage effects

This paper is the first to employ a multivariate extension of the LHAR–CJ model for realized volatility of Corsi and Renó (2012) considering continuous and jump volatility components and leverage effects. The model is applied to financial (S&P 500), commodity (WTI crude oil) and forex (US$/EUR) intraday futures data and allows new insights in the transmission mechanisms among these markets. Besides significant leverage effects, we find that the jump components of all considered assets do not contain incremental information for the one-step ahead realized volatility. The volatility of S&P 500 and US$/EUR exchange rate futures exhibits significant spillovers to the realized volatility of WTI. Moreover, decreasing equity prices appear to increase volatility in other markets, while strengthening of the US$ seems to calm down the crude oil market.     

中国农产品期货市场效率实证分析:1998-2002

本文旨在检验1998-2002年我国小麦和大豆期货市场效率并对农产品期货市场和现货市场做出相应评估.通过采纳Johansen协整检验方法,论文针对三种不同的现货价格以及预测跨度从1周到6个月不等的期货价格进行了正式统计检验.结果表明,我国大豆期货价格与现货价格之间存在长期均衡关系,大豆期货市场的短期效率相对较高.小麦期货市场缺乏效率,这可能应当归因于期货市场发展尚不成熟以及投机过度.     

Limit order books,uninformed traders and commodity derivatives: Insights from the European carbon futures

This paper provides a suitable model for studying the strategic behavior of uninformed investors that trade commodity derivatives via limit order books. Two main testable implications are obtained after solving for the model equilibrium. The adverse selection costs of uninformed traders depend on the inflow of market orders and their risk aversion. Next, the adverse selection costs of uninformed buyers and sellers and the difference of their asset valuations determine the size of their bid-ask spread.An analysis of European carbon futures data confirms the relevance of these implications. Moreover, we detect a diagonal effect that results in a positive correlation of market orders, which is driven by adverse selection, then by order splitting strategies and by imitative strategies of uninformed traders to a lesser extent.     

DYNAMICS BETWEEN NORTH AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN AGRICULTURAL FUTURES PRICES DURING TURMOIL AND FINANCIALIZATION

North American and European agricultural futures markets faced significant changes in recent years, i.e., the financialization which originated in the USA, the increase of futures trading in Europe and the recent price turmoils in international commodity markets. We analyse the long‐ and short‐run dynamics between North American and European agricultural futures prices during these institutional changes. The empirical results show that the US markets lead in terms of price transmissions and volatility spillovers. US markets, however, predominantly react to deviations from the long‐run equilibrium which indicates a rising impact of European agricultural markets on a global scale.     

Commodity futures contracts: Furnishing an elastic currency in the nineteenth century

In this paper, I show that nineteenth century US interest rates are relatively more volatile before 1874 and I propose, and demonstrate how, commodity futures trading is the likely principal proximate explanation for this change in behavior. Borrowing from Turnovsky [Econometrica 51 (1983) 1363], I model the optimizing behaviors of risk averse producers and risk neutral speculators in the absence and presence of futures contracts and I show that, so long as one party to a futures contract was risk averse, futures markets would have quelled interest rate volatility caused by variations in planting and harvesting conditions.     

建立商品期货持仓风险指数的设想

期货投资是一种风险度很高的金融投资方式,由于中国在很多大宗商品上尚未取得定价话语权,因此中国期货市场的价格波动受外盘的影响很大。对于持仓过夜的投资者而言,一旦持仓方向错误,就会遭受巨大的经济损失。有鉴于此,提出了建立适合中国国情的定量化商品期货持仓风险指数的设想,以帮助投资者认清各品种持仓过夜的市场风险,做到理性投资。