Any “Easy” Risk Premium in Agricultural Commodity Futures?
June 6, 2011 - Commodity Futures
Can speculators in agricultural commodity futures earn a reliable premium from those seeking to hedge agricultural industry risk? In other words, can traders systematically exploit a persistent backwardation of agricultural commodity futures contracts? In the May 2011 version of their paper entitled “Returns to Traders and Existences of a Risk Premium of a Risk Premium in Agricultural Futures Markets”, Nicole Aulerich, Scott Irwin and Philip Garcia investigate whether hedgers pay speculators for protection against adverse price movements in 12 agricultural commodity futures markets (cocoa, coffee, corn, cotton, feeder cattle, lean hogs, live cattle, soybeans, soybean oil, sugar, CBOT wheat and KS wheat). They focus on the performance of commodity index traders (emerging in 2004), who should expose this risk premium by passively holding positions opposite of hedgers. Using end-of-day prices and positions data for 12 agricultural commodity futures contracts and options by type of trader (commercial hedger, large speculators, commodity index trader and small traders) during January 2000 through September 2009 (a period of large price changes), they find that: Keep Reading