Post-financialization Commodity Return and Volatility Facts
October 13, 2014 - Commodity Futures
How do commodity futures behave in the post-financialization era, with commodities easily accessible via exchange-traded instruments and futures? In their September 2014 paper entitled “Factor Structure in Commodity Futures Return and Volatility”, Peter Christoffersen, Asger Lunde and Kasper Olesen analyze commodity return and volatility dynamics since financialization (after deregulation of commodity markets in the early 2000s). They consider 15 contract series comprised of the three most heavily traded of each of energy (light crude, natural gas, heating oil), metals (gold, silver, copper), grains (soybeans, corn, wheat), softs (sugar, coffee, cotton) and meats (live cattle, lean hogs, feeder cattle). They focus on: whether factors might explain commodity returns and volatilities, and integration of commodity markets with the equity market. In assessing continuous positions, they roll from an expiring commodity contract to the subsequent contract when daily volume of the latter exceeds that of the former. Using daily returns derived from over 750 million commodity futures contract trades for the selected 15 series and for SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) during January 2004 through December 2013, they find that: Keep Reading