Commodity Futures

We occasionally select for retrospective review an all-time “best selling” research paper from the past few years from the General Financial Markets category of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Here we summarize the January 2006 paper entitled “The Tactical and Strategic Value of Commodity Futures” (download count over 2,400) by Claude Erb and Campbell Harvey. Commodity futures are derivative, short-maturity claims on real assets. In this paper, the authors explore the strategic and tactical opportunities that these derivatives present to investors. Using long-run commodity futures return data as available mostly through mid-2004, they conclude that: Keep Reading

Do Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs), generally associated with the “managed futures” hedge fund style, successfully time their chosen markets? These traders take long or short positions in investment vehicles with low transaction cost (such as futures contracts) to exploit trends in commodity prices, exchanges rates, interest rates and equity prices. In the February 2008 version of their paper entitled “Market Timing of CTAs: An Examination of Systematic CTAs vs. Discretionary CTAs”, Hossein Kazemi and Ying Li investigate the return and volatility timing ability of CTAs and examine whether there is a difference in market timing abilities between systematic and discretionary traders. To this end, they develop a set of risk factors based on returns from the most heavily traded futures contracts. Using monthly, net-of-fees return data for 1994-2004 (encompassing 278 live and 622 defunct CTA funds), they conclude that: Keep Reading

Some market commentators cite the price of crude oil as an important indicator of future stock market behavior. Is expensive crude oil a sign of future inflation or a drag on aggregate corporate earnings, or is it a proxy for general economic strength? Does a local peak (valley) in the price of crude oil portend a falling (rising) overall stock market? Comparing the weekly crude oil spot price for the U.S. with the weekly level of the S&P 500 index for the period 1/97-8/07, we find that… Keep Reading

Do relatively low transaction costs and ease of short selling enable profitable technical trading in commodity futures markets? In their recent paper entitled “Can Commodity Futures be Profitably Traded with Quantitative Market Timing Strategies?”, Ben Marshall, Rochester Cahan and Jared Cahan investigate the effectiveness of 7,846 quantitative trading rules from five rule families (Filter, Moving Average, Support and Resistance, Channel Breakouts, and On-Balance Volume) for 15 kinds of commodity futures contracts. They test these rules for cocoa, coffee, cotton, crude oil, feeder cattle, gold, heating oil, live cattle, oats, platinum, silver, soy beans, soy oil, sugar and wheat futures. Their testing includes two bootstrapping methodologies, adjustment for data snooping bias and evaluations over different time periods. Using daily price and volume data for 1984-2005, they conclude that: Keep Reading

We occasionally select for retrospective review an all-time “best selling” research paper from the past few years from the General Financial Markets category of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Here we summarize the February 2005 paper entitled “Facts and Fantasies About Commodity Futures” (download count over 12,000) by Gary Gorton and Geert Rouwenhorst. Commodity futures are derivative, short-maturity claims on real assets. Many commodities have pronounced price/volatility seasonality. In this paper, the authors compare and contrast the basic properties of commodity futures, equities and corporate bonds. Using monthly returns for stocks (the S&P 500 index), corporate bonds and a broad equally-weighted index of for commodity futures over the period July 1959 through December 2004, they conclude that: Keep Reading