Using a novel comprehensive database of 230 commodity futures that traded between 1871 and 2018, we document that futures prices have on average been set at a discount to future spot prices by about 5%. The historical risk premium is robust across commodity sectors and varies with the state of...

We propose a novel measure of the ex-ante commodity downside-risk premium (CDP) for each commodity based on a term structure model of commodity futures. Our theory-based CDP, capturing forward-looking information in the futures markets, outperforms well-known characteristics in explaining the...

The detrended implied volatility of commodity options (VOL) forecasts the cross section of the commodity futures returns significantly. A zero-cost strategy that is long in low VOL and short in high VOL commodities yields an annualized return of 12.66% and a Sharpe ratio of 0.69. Notably, the...

There has been substantial research effort aimed to forecast futures price return volatilities of financial and commodity assets. Some part of this research focuses on the performance of time-series models (in particular ARCH models) versus option implied volatility models. A significant part of...

This paper studies the spread of Brent-WTI futures prices using a no-arbitrage term structure model with one common and two latent idiosyncratic risk factors. We document more negative risk premia for WTI than for Brent, and the differences are more pronounced at longer maturities. The...

Derivatives are playing an increasing role within the trading ecosystem of Bitcoin markets. This includes futures that are traded on US regulated exchanges like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and unregulated exchanges like Binance. Prior research on which bitcoin markets lead in price...

Perpetual futures -- swap contracts that never expire -- are by far the most popular derivative traded in cryptocurrency markets, with more than $100 billion traded daily. Perpetuals provide investors with leveraged exposure to cryptocurrencies, which does not require rollover or direct...

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...

Typically, three types of implied volatility smiles are seen in commodity options: the reverse skew, the smile, and the forward skew. I put forward an economic explanation for all three types of implied volatility smiles based on the idea that a commodity call option is valued in analogy with...

This paper examines the informational content of commodity futures term structures over time. Time series of commodity prices and returns are analyzed by means of static and rolling principal component analysis. We use weekly data from January 1998 to July 2009 of 23 commodity underlyings from...