We analyze the variance risk of commodity markets. We construct synthetic variance swaps and find significantly negative realized and expected variance swap payoffs in most markets. We find evidence of commonalities among the realized payoffs of commodity variance swaps. We also document...

Using daily returns on 34 futures contracts over the 2010-2022 period, we examine the factors driving these returns. We show that all commodities can be grouped by their drivers into intuitive groups based on their factorization into 1) food, 2) metals and oil and 3) precious metals. The three...

This paper addresses the question of whether the oil price spike of 2003-2008 was a bubble. We document and discuss what is known about the level of speculation in the paper oil market. We then analyze the dynamics of the term structure of futures prices, both during the earlier period of...

This paper examines the behavior of futures prices and trader positions around the occurrence of price limits in commodity futures markets. We ask whether limit events are the result of shocks to fundamental volatility or the result of temporary volatility induced by the trading of...

This paper investigates price jumps in commodity markets. We find that jumps are rare and extreme events but occur less frequently than in stock markets. Nonetheless, jump correlations across commodities can be high depending on the commodity sectors. Energy, metal and grains commodities show...

We examine the response of ICE Brent Crude futures to the spot Dated Brent benchmark published by Platts. Trading activity in the futures market intensifies during the benchmark assessment. We also find trading in the direction of the published benchmark during the price assessment window....

I test for the presence of asymmetric volatility in the Brent and Light crude oil futures markets. My investigation is based on a variant of the heterogeneous autoregressive volatility model, using daily realized variance and return series from 2004 through 2009. I find that a decline in oil...

This study decomposes a momentum factor (MOM) in the commodity futures market. A high-to-price (HTP) factor generates a higher Sharpe ratio than a price-to-high (PTH) factor. We uncover that the profitability mechanisms across three momentum factors are different. The positive returns on MOM and...

Most institutional investors gain access to commodities through diversified index funds, even though mean-reverting prices and low correlation among commodities returns indicate that two-fund separation does not hold for commodities. In contrast to demand for stocks and bonds, we find that, on...

This paper examines how speculative futures trading affects commodity markets in terms of price impacts, volatility, and market quality. Contrary to the popular belief that speculators are responsible for the recent commodity price fluctuation, my analysis finds no evidence that speculators...