Skewness as Commodity Futures Return Predictor
November 5, 2015 - Commodity Futures
Does the third moment (skewness) of commodity futures return distributions predict subsequent returns? In the October 2015 version of their paper entitled “Commodities as Lotteries: Skewness and the Returns of Commodity Futures”, Adrian Fernandez-Perez, Bart Frijns, Ana-Maria Fuertes and Joelle Miffre examine the relationship between skewness and future returns in commodity futures markets. They calculate futures series returns as the difference in logarithmic settlement prices based on holding the nearest-to-maturity contract until one month to maturity and then rolling to the second nearest contract. They compute futures series skewness based on the last 12 months of daily returns. They study skewness effects by ranking futures into fifths (quintiles) based on past skewness. Using daily settlement prices for 27 commodity futures contract series (12 agriculture, 5 energy, 4 livestock, 5 metal and random length lumber) during January 1987 through November 2014, they find that: Keep Reading