Dynamic conditional copula correlation and optimal hedge ratios with currency futures

This study investigates efficiency of the futures hedge implemented through the currency markets. The copula DCC-EGARCH model is estimated with the bivariate error correction term to minimize variance of the currency portfolios. The estimation results for the currencies of the Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, euro, British pound and Japanese yen show that the inclusion of the external realized variance estimators into the variance equation of the estimated model improves the model's ability to account for the clustered data variance. In hedging portfolios, the information content of the realized variance estimator effectively reduces the variance of the portfolios.     

Dynamic spillover effects across petroleum spot and futures volatilities,trading volume and open interest

This paper examines the existence of dynamic spillover effects across petroleum based commodities and among spot-futures volatilities, trading volume and open interest. Realized volatilities of spot-futures markets are used as inputs to estimate a VAR model following Diebold and Yilmaz (2014, 2015) and distinguish dynamic spillovers in total and net effects. Results reveal the existence of large and time-varying spillovers among the spot-futures volatilities and across petroleum-based commodities when examined pairwise. In addition, speculative pressures, as reflected by futures trading volume, and hedging pressures, as reflected by open interest, are shown to transmit large and persistent spillovers to the spot and futures volatilities of crude oil and heating oil-gasoline markets, respectively.     

THE HEDGING EFFECTIVENESS OF FOREIGN CURRENCY FUTURES

This study provides an initial analysis of the hedging potential of the foreign currency futures markets. Numerous studies exist on the pricing efficiency and hedging effectiveness of the foreign currency forward markets, but little research exists on the foreign currency futures market. An adequate price history has only recently become available to carry out such an investigation. Minimum risk hedges and hedging effectiveness measures are presented for five currencies: the British pound, German mark, Canadian dollar, Japanese yen and Swiss franc. Analysis indicates the relative desirability of positions in futures contracts to minimize the risk of spot currency exposure. Results also show hedging effectiveness increases with the investment horizon.     

信息传递效率、货币传染与东亚汇率波动溢出分析

本文运用Cheung和Ng交叉相关系数方法,对东亚六国货币①——人民币、日元、韩元、泰国铢、新加坡元和林吉特的名义美元汇率波动溢出进行检验,发现东亚汇率波动溢出普遍存在且具有不对称性和多层次溢出特征。实证结果还表明,日元交易商能更加有效处理来自人民币、韩元、泰铢、新加坡元和林吉特五种货币的信息,而人民币交易商对处理来自日元、泰铢、新加坡元等货币的信息效率不高。     

Comparing COVID-19 with the GFC: A shockwave analysis of currency markets

I analyze the shockwave effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on currency markets, with a comparison to the global financial crisis (GFC), employing Kapetanios m-break unit root test, investigations of standalone risk measures—downside variance, upside risk, volatility skewness, Gaussian Value at Risk (VaR), historical VaR, modified VaR—and Diebold–Yilmaz volatility spillover analysis. Standalone risk analysis shows that the turmoil in the initial months of COVID-19 was not as severe as that in the GFC. However, examination of co-movements and volatility spillovers illustrates a different scenario. According to the results of the static connectedness measure of Diebold–Yilmaz, the shockwave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the total volatility spillover is about eight times greater than that of the GFC. Among standalone risk measures, the results closest to this finding are obtained from volatility skewness analysis. Additionally, of six foreign exchange rates, the Brazilian real and Turkish lira are the currencies experiencing the greatest increase in received volatility during the GFC and the COVID-19 pandemic, respectively. These findings suggest the severe effect of crises on emerging financial markets.     

Foreign exchange market return spillovers and connectedness among African countries

This paper examines the foreign exchange return shock spillovers and network connectedness among African countries during crisis periods using (Diebold & Yilmaz, 2012; 2014; 2016) which is based on generalized VAR and network theory between June 2004 and June 2021. Overall, the study found a low system-wide spillover connectedness among African foreign exchange markets. However, the total systemic spillover index increased during the eurozone sovereign debt crisis followed by global financial crisis, indicating evidence of contagion effects. This offers good diversification opportunities in the African currency market during crisis periods. The study also found no significant evidence of spillover effects among African currencies. Nonetheless, the network connectedness analysis found a positive significant pairwise return spillovers from the South African rand, Moroccan dirham and the CFA francs to Botswana pula, and from Moroccan dirham to CFA francs and South African rand. Furthermore, the study found South African rand, Moroccan dirham and CFA francs as the most significant net-transmitter of return shocks to other currencies whiles the Kenyan shilling and Botswana pula are the net-receivers of return shocks from other currencies. These results have implications for African central banks interventions in stabilizing their exchange rates to facilitate intra and inter-African trade and for international portfolio investors in managing their foreign exchange risk exposures.     

Hedging with Chinese Aluminum Futures: International Evidence with Return and Volatility Spillover Indices Under Structural Breaks

This paper examines the hedging performance of the Shanghai futures market, with the London futures market acting as the channel for volatility spillover. Taking into consideration structural change, basis effects, and return and volatility spillover effects, the authors find that the estimated hedging performance is not improved. Their findings suggest that the effectiveness of the hedging performance of aluminum futures contracts in China is not affected by the magnitude or direction of return and volatility spillovers. Therefore, even when the magnitude and direction of volatility spillover from other markets can be correctly predicted, the hedging performance of a futures contract cannot be significantly improved. This paper uses precise measures of return spillovers and volatility spillovers based directly on the framework of vector autoregressive variance decompositions. The study also includes an analysis of both crisis and noncrisis episodes, with modeling on bursts in spillovers.     

Dynamic connectedness and optimal hedging strategy among commodities and financial indices

This study looks at the best portfolio strategy for mitigating the risk associated with the MSCI ACWI & Frontier Markets Index, as well as the volatility spillovers between commodity markets and certain financial markets. Therefore, we empirically explore the connectedness among three financial indicators and five product groups using the framework of Diebold and Yilmaz (2012), which is based on a vector autoregressive process and variance decomposition of prediction errors, between 31 May 2002 and 30 July 2021. We also investigate the best hedging instrument(s) for the MSCI ACWI & Frontier Markets Global Index by combining the Asymmetric Dynamic Conditional Correlation (ADCC) model with the risk reduction index and the hedging ratios. Our empirical findings highlight the importance of volatility spillover effects across financial markets, which is not the case for commodity markets with low volatility externalities. Furthermore, the first markets appear to be net transmitters of volatility, whereas the second markets appear to be net receivers. Using the approach of Kroner and Sultan (1993), we show that the least risk portfolio is a portfolio that combines the MSCI ACWI & Frontier Markets Global Index with financial indices related to socially responsible and irresponsible investing.     

Higher-order moment risk connectedness and optimal investment strategies between international oil and commodity futures markets: Insights from the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia-Ukraine conflict

This paper investigates the higher-order moment risk connectedness between West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil futures, Brent oil futures, Chinese oil futures and commodity futures (agricultural, industrial metals, and precious metals) before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and following the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, by combining ex-post moment measures and the novel time-varying parameter (TVP)-vector auto-regression (VAR)-based connectedness approach. Further, this paper depicts the dynamic overall and pairwise correlations between oil and commodity futures and constructs the hedging and optimal-weighted portfolio strategies using the DCC-GARCH t-Copula model. This paper also constructs the multivariate oil-commodity portfolio based on the newly proposed minimum connectedness portfolio approach and takes into account the higher-order moment risk connectedness. The empirical results demonstrate that the dynamic linkages between international oil and commodity futures are positive, time-varying, and have been greatly intensified by the outbreak of the 2018 China-US trade war, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict. The risk connectedness results are moment-dependent. The averaged total skewness and kurtosis spillovers are lower than the return and volatility connectedness. Brent (WTI) oil is the largest net transmitter of the return and volatility (skewness and kurtosis) risk spillovers. The dynamic total, net, and net-pairwise spillovers are all time-varying and highly reactive to major crises, especially the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Furthermore, the optimal-weighted portfolio shows a higher risk reduction than the hedging strategy. Finally, the minimum skewness connectedness portfolio shows relatively higher hedging effectiveness, while the minimum kurtosis connectedness portfolio offers the highest cumulative returns.     

Dynamic volatility spillovers across oil and natural gas futures markets based on a time-varying spillover method

This paper analyzes dynamic volatility spillovers between four major energy commodities (i.e., crude oil, gasoline, heating oil and natural gas) in the oil-natural gas future markets. We construct a time-varying spillover method by combining the TVP-VAR-SV model and the spillover method of Diebold and Yilmaz (2009, 2012, 2014). We use the spillover method to obtain time-varying total, directional and pairwise volatility spillover indices. Our results summarize as follows: (1) The volatility spillover indices present peaks and troughs during some periods, such as shale gas revolution, financial crisis, and oil price crash; (2) After the U.S. shale gas revolution, the size of volatility spillover from natural gas future market has reduced sharply, but volatility doesn't decouple from the other three oil future markets; (3) The directional spillover is asymmetric. The crude oil and heating oil futures market are main net transmitter of volatility risk information, while the gasoline and natural gas futures markets are the net receiver; (4) For natural gas future market, the pairwise volatility spillover from crude oil future market has the most significant influence.     

Size effect,methodological issues and ‘risk-to-default’: evidence from the UK stock market

The hedging effectiveness of dynamic strategies is compared with static (traditional) ones using futures contracts for the five leading currencies. The traditional hedging model assumes time invariance in the joint distribution of spot and futures price changes thus leading to a constant optimal hedge ratio (OHR). However, if this time-invariance assumption is violated, time-varying OHRs are appropriate for hedging purposes. A bivariate GARCH model is employed to estimate the joint distribution of spot and futures currency returns and the sequence of dynamic (time-varying) OHRs is constructed based upon the estimated parameters of the conditional covariance matrix. The empirical evidence strongly supports time-varying OHRs but the dynamic model provides superior out-of-sample hedging performance, compared to the static model, only for the Canadian dollar.     

Do currency exchange rates impact gold prices? New evidence from the ongoing COVID-19 period

We apply the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag method to examine the relationships between seven leading currency exchange rates and gold prices using daily data from January 2017 to April 2021. The results reveal that in the short term, while negative United States dollar (USD) to United Kingdom pound, negative USD to Canadian dollar, negative USD to Japanese yen, negative USD to Danish krone, and positive USD to euro exchange rates increase gold prices, a lagged positive USD to euro and lagged positive USD to Danish krone exchange rates decrease gold prices. A test of the pre-pandemic normal period reveals that the uneven and unpredictable impacts of six exchange rates on gold prices are particularly due to COVID-19. We find efficiency in the gold market, in line with the market efficiency hypothesis and random walk theory. Our findings indicate that gold acts as a safe-haven asset for investors during COVID-19.     

Dynamic volatility spillovers and investment strategies between the Chinese stock market and commodity markets

Building on the increased interest in the volatility spillover effects between Chinese stock market and commodity markets, this paper investigates the dynamic volatility spillovers of Chinese stock market and Chinese commodity markets based on the volatility spillover index under the framework of TVP-VAR. The result shows that there is a highly dependent relationship between the stock market and commodity markets. On average, the Chinese stock market is the net recipient of spillover, non-ferrous metals and chemical industry have a very obvious spillover impact on the stock market. The degree of total volatility spillover is different in different periods. After major crisis events, the volatility correlation between markets increases. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the spillover effect of the stock market on the commodity market has been significantly enhanced. Then optimal portfolio weights and hedge ratios are calculated for portfolio diversification and risk management. The result shows that the ability of most commodities to hedge against risks is significantly reduced when the crisis occurs; NMFI (precious metals) and CRFI (grain) still have good hedging ability after the crisis, but the effectiveness of hedging risk is relatively low. Besides, the combination of CRFI and SHCI (the Shanghai composite index) is the most effective for risk reduction.     

Directional spillover effects and time-frequency nexus between oil,gold and stock markets: Evidence from pre and during COVID-19 outbreak

The Covid-19 crisis has been spread rapidly throughout the world so far. However, how deep and long the turbulence would depend on the success of solutions taken to deter the spread of Covid-19, the impacts of government policies may be prominent to alleviate the current crisis. In this article, we investigate the spillover effects and time-frequency connectedness between S&P 500, crude oil prices, and gold asset using both the spillover index of Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) and the wavelet coherence to evaluate whether the time-varying dynamic return spillover index exhibited the intensity and direction of transmission during the Covid-19 outbreak. Overall, the present results shed light on that in comparison with the pre-Covid-19 period, and the return transmissions are more apparent during the Covid-19 crisis. More importantly, there exist significant dependent patterns about the information spillovers among the crude oil, S&P 500, and gold markets might provide significant implications for portfolio managers, investors, and government agencies.     

从价值尺度的历史视角看货币国际化的机遇

货币的最基本功能是执行价值尺度。随着社会发展,价值尺度的内涵和外延在不断变化,至今经济学没有解决"绝对价值尺度"问题。英镑将其价值尺度与金本位制结合在一起使其成为国际货币;美元不仅延续了英镑的做法(通过布雷顿森林体系),而且通过大宗商品的国际组织逐步扩展网络效应(或称之为"网络外部性"),在其衰退期还击退日元的挑战,保持了美元的霸主地位。日元国际化生不逢时,浮动汇率制使日元难以成为国际价值尺度,如欲获取国际价值尺度功能则会使日本损伤国力。本文通过模型和实证阐述了国际货币的价值效应和网络效应,论证了黄金非货币化时代新兴经济体主权货币国际化的难题。     

Impact of macro-economic surprises on carry trade activity

Can official news and policy announcements affect foreign exchange speculation? A widespread speculative strategy in foreign exchange markets is carry trade. This paper explores the links between macro-economic news and foreign exchange options to identify macro-economic fundamentals most relevant to the pricing of downside risk – measured by risk reversals options contracts – to carry trade activity. Focusing primarily on the Japanese yen carry trade, we identify a significant impact of macro-economic surprises on dollar/yen risk reversals. The effect is sizeable, with news related to bilateral trade balance of particular concern. Moreover, there is a close link between risk reversals and speculative futures positions in Japanese yen. This allows us to quantify a substantial effect of macro-economic news on carry trade activity, with the cost of hedging as the transmission mechanism.     

Time and frequency dynamics of connectedness and hedging performance in global stock markets: Bitcoin versus conventional hedges

Some studies have revealed the hedging ability of Bitcoin against stock markets, but the knowledge of how it compares with other hedges is in its infancy. This paper presents the first study on time-frequency domain connectedness and hedging among five hedges (Bitcoin, crude oil, commodities, gold and the U.S. dollar (USD) index) and four stock indices (developed markets ex U.S., emerging markets ex China, U.S. and China). We find that the connectedness between hedges and stock markets varies by time across time horizons. Specifically, the connectedness between Bitcoin and stock indices is the smallest among all hedges, especially for the short horizon. Gold and USD are isolated from other markets at longer horizons. The hedging ratio, optimal portfolio weights and hedging effectiveness also vary across investment horizons. For short-term investment, gold has better hedging effectiveness, especially for emerging stock markets and the U.S. stock market. For median- and long-term investment, USD has better performance, especially for developed markets ex U.S. and emerging stock markets. Additionally, although Bitcoin has good hedging properties, it has high volatility compared with other hedging assets. In other words, if Bitcoin is included in a portfolio, investors should pay attention to its wide variation. These empirical findings highlight the important role that gold and USD play in hedging against global stock markets.     

On the dynamic dependence and investment performance of crude oil and clean energy stocks

This paper examines the directional spillover between crude oil prices and stock prices of technology and clean energy companies. The study uses the daily data over the period from May 2005 to April 2015. The estimated results exhibit following empirical regularities. First, it appears that technology stocks play vital role in the return and volatility spillovers of renewable energy stocks and crude oil prices. Second, technology (PSE) and clean energy indices (ECO) are the dominant emitters of return and volatility spillovers to the crude oil (WTI) prices. Third, the time and event-dependent movements are well captured by the directional spillover approach. Fourth, the application of directional spillover method seems to be more advantageous than MGARCH models as it not only establishes the inter-variables return and volatility spillovers but also helps in identifying direction of spillover through calculation of pairwise net spillovers. Last, the dynamic hedging results suggest that clean energy index can provide a profitable hedging opportunity in combination with crude oil futures than technology index. Many new findings further discussed and analysed.     

Higher Moments and Exchange Rate Behavior

This paper uses 15‐minute exchange rate returns data for the six most liquid currencies (i.e., the Australian dollar, British pound, Canadian dollar, Euro, Japanese yen, and Swiss franc) vis‐à‐vis the United States dollar to examine whether a GARCH model augmented with higher moments (HM‐GARCH) performs better than a traditional GARCH (TG) model. Two findings are unraveled. First, the inclusion of odd/even moments in modeling the return/variance improves the statistical performance of the HM‐GARCH model. Second, trading strategies that extract buy and sell trading signals based on exchange rate forecasts from HM‐GARCH models are more profitable than those that depend on TG models.     

Volatility transmission in emerging European foreign exchange markets

This paper studies the dynamics of volatility transmission between Central European (CE) currencies and the EUR/USD foreign exchange using model-free estimates of daily exchange rate volatility based on intraday data. We formulate a flexible yet parsimonious parametric model in which the daily realized volatility of a given exchange rate depends both on its own lags as well as on the lagged realized volatilities of the other exchange rates. We find evidence of statistically significant intra-regional volatility spillovers among the CE foreign exchange markets. With the exception of the Czech and, prior to the recent turbulent economic events, Polish currencies, we find no significant spillovers running from the EUR/USD to the CE foreign exchange markets. To measure the overall magnitude and evolution of volatility transmission over time, we construct a dynamic version of the Diebold–Yilmaz volatility spillover index and show that volatility spillovers tend to increase in periods characterized by market uncertainty.