Recently, commodity index investing has come under attack. A Staff Report by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation (hereafter, the "subcommittee report") "…finds that there is significant and persuasive evidence to conclude that these commodity index traders, in the...

The commodity futures basis—the difference between the first and second futures prices—is known to forecast commodity futures returns, arguably through its relation with the convenience yield. We propose a refined measure of the basis, dubbed the relative basis, which is the difference...

We examine the ability of idiosyncratic skewness to explain the cross section of commodity futures returns at both the characteristic and factor levels. We find that idiosyncratic skewness negatively and significantly predicts cross-sectional commodity futures returns, and largely accounts for...

Options on crude oil futures are the most actively traded commodity options. We develop a class of computationally efficient discrete-time jump models that allow for closed-form option valuation, and we use crude oil futures and options data to investigate the economic importance of jumps and...

I develop and test a model to study the interaction between the commodity and stock markets. This study attempts to clarify the debate about the effect of financialization on commodity markets. Theoretically, the futures risk premium is determined by hedging pressure, stock market returns, and...

This paper studies the dynamic interaction between the net positions of traders and risk premiums in commodity futures markets. Short-term position changes are mainly driven by the liquidity demands of non-commercial traders, while long-term variation is primarily driven by the hedging demands...

Both large oil price increases and decreases are associated with deteriorating economic conditions. Consistent with this stylized fact, we find that the projection of the state price density (SPD) on oil returns estimated from oil futures and option prices displays a U-shaped pattern. Because...