Agriculture is of inestimable value to South Africa because it is a major source of job creation and plays a key role in earning foreign exchange. The most significant contribution of agriculture, and in particular maize, is its ability to provide food for the nation. For a number of decades government legislation determined prices, and as such the trade of grains on the futures exchange requires market participants to adapt to a volatile environment. The research focuses on the ability of market participants to effectively mitigate price volatility on the futures exchange through the use of derivative instruments, and the possibility of developing risk management strategies that will outperform the return offered by the market. The study shows that market participants are unable to use derivative instruments in such a way that price volatility is minimised. The findings of the study also indicate that the development of derivative risk management strategies could result in better returns than those offered by the market, mainly by exploiting trends on the futures market. / Financial Accounting / M. Comm. (Business Management)

Die globale Finanzkrise unterstrich die Bedeutung von makrofinanziellen Verknüpfungen für Vermögenspreisdynamiken und Konjunkturschwankungen. Bei angebotsseitigen Finanzfriktionen werden hierbei Finanzintermediäre, insbesondere ihre Bilanz und ihre Risikotragfähigkeit, als zentral erachtet. Diese Dissertation wendet verschiedene Klassen von SVAR Modellen und neueste Identifizierungsmethoden an um empirische Belege für die Rolle von Finanzintermediären für Finanzmärkte und die Realwirtschaft zu liefern. Das erste Kapitel untersucht das regimeabhängige Handelsverhalten von Finanzintermediären auf dem Öl-Futures-Markt und zeigt, dass Finanzintermediäre während Krisenzeiten preisunelastischer werden und mehr ihren eigenen Interessen folgend handeln. Die Ergebnisse deuten auf eine nichtlineare Futures-Preissetzung von Intermediären hin, was die Volatilität im Markt während Krisenzeiten signifikant erhöht. Das zweite Kapitel legt dar, dass die meisten Händlergruppen in Rohstoff-Futures-Märkten eine antizyklische Investitionsstrategie verfolgen. Das einfache SVAR Modell eignet sich für die Analyse der Handelsstrategien verschiedener Händlergruppen sowie deren Auswirkungen für die Preisvolatilität in jedweden Vermögensmärkten. Kapitel 3 identifiziert in einem einzelnen Modell sektorspezifische Kreditangebotsschocks gegenüber Firmen und Haushalten und präsentiert empirische Belege über deren Effekte für die US-Wirtschaft. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass beide Kreditangebotsschocks wesentlich zum Konjunkturverlauf während des Beobachtungszeitraums beigetragen haben, wobei Kreditangebotsschocks gegenüber Haushalten klassischen Nachfrageschocks ähneln. Das letzte Kapitel analysiert die globalen Auswirkungen des Schuldenabbaus europäischer Banken und findet, dass europäische Bankbilanzschocks Bruttokapitalzuflüsse und das Kreditwachstum in fortgeschrittenen Ökonomien mit entwickelten Finanzmärkten beeinflussen, aber nur geringfügige Effekte auf das Wirtschaftswachstum haben. / The global financial crisis has demonstrated the importance of macrofinancial linkages for asset price dynamics and business cycles. Regarding supply-side financial frictions, financial intermediaries, in particular their balance sheet and risk-bearing capacity, are considered to be pivotal. This thesis applies different classes of SVAR models and state-of-the-art identification techniques to provide empirical findings on the role of financial intermediaries in financial markets and the real economy. The first chapter studies the state-dependent trading behavior of financial intermediaries in the oil futures market and shows that intermediaries become less price-elastic and trade more according to their own demand. The findings suggest that the futures pricing of intermediaries is nonlinear which significantly raises the volatility in the market during crisis times. The second chapter demonstrates that most trader groups in commodity futures markets employ contrarian strategies. The simple SVAR model can be applied for analyzing the trading strategies of different trader groups as well as their effects for price volatility in any asset market. Chapter 3 identifies sector-specific business and household loan supply shocks in one single model and provides empirical evidence on their effects for the U.S. macroeconomy. The results show that both loan supply shocks have contributed significantly to business cycle dynamics over the sample period, with household loan supply shocks resembling classical demand shocks. The last chapter analyzes the global effects of European bank deleveraging and finds that European bank balance sheet shocks significantly affect gross capital inflows and credit growth in in advanced economies with developed financial markets, but have only minor effects on output growth.

This thesis analyzes market risk factors in commodity and currency markets. It focuses on the impact of extreme events on the prices of financial products traded in these markets, and on the overall market risk faced by the investors. The first chapter develops a simple two-factor jump-diffusion model for valuation of contingent claims on commodities in order to investigate the pricing implications of shocks that are exogenous to this market. The second chapter analyzes the nature and pricing implications of the abrupt changes in exchange rates, as well as the ability of these changes to explain the shapes of option-implied volatility "smiles". Finally, the third chapter employs the notion that key results of the univariate extreme value theory can be applied separately to the principal components of ARMA-GARCH residuals of a multivariate return series. The proposed approach yields more precise Value at Risk forecasts than conventional multivariate methods, while maintaining the same efficiency. / El objetivo de esta tesis es analizar los factores del riesgo del mercado de las materias primas y las divisas. Está centrada en el impacto de los eventos extremos tanto en los precios de los productos financieros como en el riesgo total de mercado al cual se enfrentan los inversores. En el primer capítulo se introduce un modelo simple de difusión y saltos (jump-diffusion) con dos factores para la valuación de activos contingentes sobre las materias primas, con el objetivo de investigar las implicaciones de shocks en los precios que son exógenos a este mercado. En el segundo capítulo se analiza la naturaleza e implicaciones para la valuación de los saltos en los tipos de cambio, así como la capacidad de éstos para explicar las formas de sonrisa en la volatilidad implicada. Por último, en el tercer capítulo se utiliza la idea de que los resultados principales de la Teoria de Valores Extremos univariada se pueden aplicar por separado a los componentes principales de los residuos de un modelo ARMA-GARCH de series multivariadas de retorno. El enfoque propuesto produce pronósticos de Value at Risk más precisos que los convencionales métodos multivariados, manteniendo la misma eficiencia.

Even though the theory of storage is historically a popular view to explain commodity futures prices, many authors focus on the oil price link. Past studies have shown an increased futures price volatility on Mondays and days when natural gas storage levels are released, which could both implicate that storage levels and temperature data are incorporated in the prices. In this thesis, the U.S. natural gas storage level change is studied as a function of the consumption and production. Consumption and production are furthered segmented and separately forecasted by modelling inverse problems that are solved by least squares regression using temperature data and timeseries analysis. The results indicate that each consumer consumption segment is highly dependent of the temperature with R2-values of above 90%. However, modelling each segment completely by time-series analysis proved to be more efficient due to lack of flexibility in the polynomials, lack of used weather stations and seasonal patterns in addition to the temperatures. Although the forecasting models could not beat analysts’ consensus estimates, these present natural gas storage level drivers and can thus be used to incorporate temperature forecasts when estimating futures prices.