Thesis advisor: Christopher Baum / Thesis advisor: Fabio Ghironi / Do events in the natural gas market cause repercussions in the crude oil market? In light of the enormous impact that price movements in the two largest U.S. energy markets have on the economy, it is important to understand not just the individual markets but also how they relate to one another. On this front, the literature presents a puzzle: while economic theory suggests that the oil and gas markets are interlinked through a bi-directional causal relationship, empirical research has concluded that the oil market affects the gas market but not vice versa. The first chapter of this dissertation improves on the previous studies in two ways: by using high-frequency, intraday oil and gas futures prices and by analyzing the effect of specific news announcements from the weekly oil and gas inventory reports. The results dispel the notion of one-way causality and provide support for the theory. The reaction of the futures volatility and returns is asymmetric, although this asymmetry does not follow the "good news" vs. "bad news" pattern from stock and bond markets; the response depends on whether the shock is driven by oil or gas inventory gluts or shortages. The two-way causality holds not only for the nearby futures contract but also for contracts of longer maturities. These findings underscore the importance of analyzing financial markets in a multi-market context. The second chapter of this dissertation asks whether volatility and trading volume evolve in a unidirectional or bidirectional, contemporaneous or lagged relationship in the crude oil and natural gas futures markets. This question is important because it affects trading and government regulation but previous studies have come to conflicting conclusions. Their main shortcoming is the low frequency of data used in the analysis. This chapter improves on the previous studies in three ways: by using high-frequency, intraday oil and gas futures prices and volume, by including trading not only during the day but also during the night, and by analyzing not only the nearby futures contract but also contracts with longer maturities. For the nearby contract, Granger-causality tests show that past values of volume help explain volatility which agrees with the Sequential Information Arrival Hypothesis. Past values of volatility have explanatory power for volume only when absolute return is used as the volatility measure; when the conditional variance from GARCH models is used as the volatility measure, the causality in this direction disappears. These results change when low-frequency daily data is applied. It is also shown that the volatility-volume relationship differs for contracts with longer maturities. These findings are relevant for regulations, such as trader position limits recently adopted by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trade Commission. The third chapter of this dissertation investigates whether the production structure of firms affects international optimal portfolios, risk-sharing, and response of terms of trade (TOT) to shocks. The answer to this question would enhance our understanding of the home equity bias, yet it has not been addressed in the theoretical literature. This chapter studies the question in a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with endogenous portfolio allocation. It shows that the optimal portfolio includes more home equity as the production structure changes from exporter-only, i.e., firms operating in their home countries and serving foreign markets by exports, to multi-national-company-extreme (MNC), i.e., firms hiring labor in both countries and producing locally in both countries. This shift occurs because changing the firms' production structure eliminates exposure to technology differences and allows the home household to accomplish the same diversification with less foreign equity. The production structure also has implications for the effect of technology shocks on the TOT. Under the exporter-only setup, a shock to technology causes a standard TOT deterioration, whereas under the MNC-extreme setup, a shock to technology leads to a TOT improvement. By producing testable predictions, this chapter underscores the need to take firms' production structure into account when analyzing international optimal portfolios, risk sharing, and response of the TOT to technology shocks. This is especially important since empirical research has generated conflicting results. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

O trabalho analisou o impacto da introdução dos contratos futuros agropecuários (de café arábica, soja, milho, açúcar cristal, etanol e boi gordo), negociados na Bolsa de Valores, Mercadorias e Futuros - BM&FBOVESPA, no risco e no retorno de uma carteira diversificada, composta por ações, títulos, ouro e dólar, entre agosto de 1994 e dezembro de 2007, sendo realizados estudos para o intervalo de tempo completo e para subdivisões de dois e três períodos, além de uma análise bianual. Foram consideradas diferentes estratégias com tais derivativos: posições estáticas (comprada ou vendida em contratos de primeiro vencimento ou de vencimentos superiores a seis meses), dinâmicas (com a utilização de médias móveis para se definir pela compra ou venda dos papéis em questão) e a partir de fundos de investimentos nacionais, que utilizam estes títulos em seus portfólios. Buscou-se ainda mensurar como a utilidade dos investidores foi alterada, considerando as composições ótimas da carteira e diferentes graus de aversão ao risco de tais agentes. Com o uso da Teoria do Portfólio, verificou-se que: a) as estratégias estáticas de compra e de venda de futuros sobre commodities elevaram a performance da carteira diversificada quando realizada análise bianual e para os períodos 1994-1998 e 1999-2003 em alguns casos, observou-se redução no risco da carteira de até 70%, para certos níveis de retorno; b) a utilização destes derivativos em estratégias dinâmicas, baseadas em médias móveis, teve, em geral, impacto positivo na performance frente aos resultados da carteira original e daquela em que se introduziram posições estáticas; c) a introdução dos fundos de investimento Sparta e Guepardo, caracterizados pela utilização de derivativos agropecuários e pela adoção de uma gestão dinâmica, também elevou significativamente o desempenho do portfólio diversificado além de aumentar consideravelmente o retorno médio da carteira, constataram-se reduções de risco para certas faixas de rentabilidade de até 40%; d) os derivativos sobre commodities estiveram presentes em praticamente todas as carteiras que maximizaram a utilidade dos agentes (exceto para o período completo e entre 1994-2000) em geral, à medida que a aversão ao risco do investidor se elevava, a participação destes papéis no portfólio decrescia. Concluiu-se, portanto, que os derivativos sobre commodities, negociados na BM&FBOVESPA, constituíram-se em instrumentos capazes de elevar a performance de uma carteira diversificada para vários dos subperíodos considerados no estudo. Em geral, os maiores benefícios da introdução destes ativos no portfólio ocorreram em períodos relativamente mais curtos (biênios), dado o caráter cíclico dos preços dos produtos agropecuários. Além disso, os resultados apontam que o uso de análises técnicas e fundamentalistas pode elevar ainda mais o desempenho das carteiras que incluem posições compradas ou vendidas estáticas em futuros sobre commodities, já que a inserção de estratégias, que utilizaram simples instrumentos de análise técnica para definição do tipo de posições a assumir, e de fundos de commodities foi capaz de elevar significativamente a performance do investimento. / The work has analyzed the impact of including commodity futures (arabica coffee, soybean, corn, crystal sugar, ethanol and live cattle), negotiated at Securities, Commodity and Futures Exchange - BM&FBOVESPA, in the performance of a diversified portfolio, composed by stocks, bonds, gold and dollar, between August of 1994 and December of 2007, when were studied the complete time break and subdivisions of two and three periods, adding a biannual analysis. Different strategies with these derivatives were considered: i) passive positions - buy and hold or sell and hold contracts of first settlement or that took six months to maturity; ii) active positions for which ones there were used a trend technical rule to determine whether a futures contract should be held as a long or short position; iii) commodity futures funds. It was also aimed to measure how investors utility was modified, considering the optimal portfolios and different levels of risk aversion. Using the Portfolio Theory, it was verified that: a) the passive strategies enhanced the portfolio performance when were considered biannual analysis and over the time periods 1994-1998 and 1999-2003 in some cases, it was noticed reduction of 70% in the portfolio risk, for some levels of return; b) the use of these derivatives in active strategies, based on a trend rule, had, in general, positive impact in performance before the results of original portfolio and that ones in which there were introduced passive positions; c) the addition of Sparta and Guepardo funds, characterized by the use of commodity futures and by the adoption of a dynamic management, improved the diversified portfolio performance; d) the commodity futures were present in almost all portfolios that maximized the investors utility (except for the complete period between 1994-2000) in general, as the risk aversion increased, the participation of these papers in the portfolio decreased. Therefore, it was concluded that commodity futures, negotiated in BM&FBOVESPA, were constituted in instruments able to improve the portfolio performance for many of the sub-periods considered in the study. In general, the benefits of these introduction occurred in shorter periods (biennium), considering the cyclical character of agricultural commodity prices. Besides that, the results show that the use of technical and fundamentalist analysis can improve the performance of the portfolios that include passive positions in commodity futures, since the addition of strategies based on simple technical analysis and of commodity funds was able to improve the performance investment significantly.

This thesis explores the idea that time frame is an important determinant of commodity trading advisor (CTA) performance. Results allow us to reject the hypothesis that short-term price movements may be due only to noise, thus CTAs will have the same performance regardless of time frame. Using several performance measures and multi-factor models we find instead that CTAs who focus on short-term price changes are better positioned to benefit from advances in financial information processing and trade execution technology.

國內黃豆、玉米與小麥等原料均自國外進口，而進口業者主要面臨採購風險包括價格風險與匯率風險兩類，現存的避險工具除了遠期契約外，期貨工具也早已成為國際間有效的避險工具，故本研究以國內大宗物資業為研究對象，探討其在開放自由進口後，所採取的避險方式與期貨工具使用狀況與目的。 　　本研究之主要發現如下： 　　1. 大宗物資業者並未採取規避價格風險的動作 　　目前國內大宗物資業者基於經營者的心態、國內外市場價格的相關性低、國內下游業者的交易習慣及交易成本的等因素考量，並未考慮採用與現貨部位相反方向的期貨操作來規避價格波動的風險。此外，由於業者是利用期貨工具決定穀物本身的成本，因此在期貨上是採只買不賣的交易方式，若是在買進期貨同時，另外再買進一個賣權(Put Option)，將可避免期貨價格下跌的風險。但國內業者基於經營者心態與交易成本提高等因素，並未考慮使用期貨與選擇權搭配避險的作法。 　　2. 經營者的心態將影響廠商使用期貨、選擇權等交易工具的目的 　　使用期貨與選擇權工具的目的包括避險與投機兩部份。目前國內業者並未考慮使用此工具來從事避險的動作，但有部份業者基於本身經營者的心態與本身的人才與經驗，使用此工具從事投機的動作，其目的主要是培養採購人員對市場的敏感度與臨場感，若是業者對本身人才與經驗極具信心，經營者與組織文化的認同，將會考慮操作期貨或選擇權工具來賺取利潤。 　　3. 大宗物資業者對於期貨投機操作，採取控制交易量的風險控管方式 　　期貨交易本身只須支付少量的保證金即可進場操作，本身為具有相當高槓桿效果的交易，價格波動將立刻反應到保證金要求，若是保證金低於維持保證金，期貨經紀商將有權進行砍倉的動作。國內從事期貨投機操作的廠商，對於公司內部的風險控管，採取控制交易量或控制金額的方式將本身風險鎖定，以避免發生失控的狀況。 　　4. 人才與經驗將是影響廠商是否採取規避匯率風險的動作之主因 　　雖然大宗物資業者在採購時將同時面對價格與匯率波動風險，但目前業者的付款方式是請銀行開信用狀給美國穀物供應商，從開匯、押狀到還款共有180天的還款期限，因此廠商可參考銀行的意見，決定還款的時機與金額。此外，由於缺乏相關人才與經驗，使得廠商並未使用遠期美金或期貨操作來規避匯率波動的風險。

This study develops a multi-period log-return quantile forecasting procedure to evaluate the performance of eleven nearby commodity futures contracts (NCFC) using a sample of 897 daily price observations and at-the-money (ATM) put and call implied volatilities of the corresponding prices for the period from 1/16/2008 to 7/29/2011. The statistical approach employs dynamic log-returns quantile regression models to forecast price densities using implied volatilities (IVs) and factors estimated through principal component analysis (PCA) from the IVs, pooled IVs and lagged returns. Extensive in-sample and out-of-sample analyses are conducted, including assessment of excess trading returns, and evaluations of several combinations of quantiles, model specifications, and NCFC's. The results suggest that the IV-PCA-factors, particularly pooled return-IV-PCA-factors, improve quantile forecasting power relative to models using only individual IV information. The ratio of the put-IV to the call-IV is also found to improve quantile forecasting performance of log returns. Improvements in quantile forecasting performance are found to be better in the tails of the distribution than in the center. Trading performance based on quantile forecasts from the models above generated significant excess returns. Finally, the fact that the single IV forecasts were outperformed by their quantile regression (QR) counterparts suggests that the conditional distribution of the log-returns is not normal.

Generally, investment in commodity ETFs cannot produce similar performance as well as spot goods. Evidence shows that ¡§rolling¡¨ futures positions experience ¡§contango and the effects on contango will harm ETFs¡¨ value. This study shows that two ETFs, USO and UNG, underperform the spot substantially because of rolling in the crude oil and natural gas market, respectively. In this study we employ four energy sector futures market data from the Thomson Reuters to investigate the impact of rolling positions on the relation between commodity index funds and in contango/backwardation. This paper finds that increasing trading in commodity index fund made futures market more contango in the WTI crude oil, natural gas and heating oil markets. This study termed the strategy as the Backwardation Sensitive Trading (BST) . Moreover, this research designs an investment strategy based on variation of backwardation. That is to examine whether BST can make a successful arbitrage: increase holding when the market is more contango and decrease holding when the market is more backwardation. Our strategy performs better than USO and UNG, and those performances perform lower tracking error on oil and natural gas over 2006 to 2010.

In this study we analyse the role of speculation in forging cross-market linkages between agriculture, equity and crude oil over the period 1992-2014. The market interdependence of ten U.S. traded agricultural commodities futures is measured through the spillover index of Diebold and Yilmaz (2009, 2012) and the dynamic conditional correlation framework of Engle (2002). Utilising data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, ve dierent measures of speculation are constructed, which are used to examine the long-run and short-run dynamics between market integration and speculation. To explore time-varying characteristics in this relationship, and as a test for robustness, we perform a sub-sampling analysis for the periods 1992-2006 and 2006-2014. We show that cross-market linkages grew stronger post-2005, particularly in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. The results of our econometric analysis indicate that any conclusions regarding the role of speculation in this process are highly sensitive both to the choice of market integration measure, as well as to how the extent of speculation is captured. Overall, though, there is little to indicate that speculation has played an important role in creating cross-market linkages. We do provide some evidence of market integration increasing with market size, but other factors, such as inflation and exchange rates, seem to provide better explanations of agriculture-equity-energy price dynamics. In line with previous research, we also find market interdependence to increase with stock market uncertainty, which suggests that the diversification benefits of commodity futures investments are actually reduced when needed the most. Considered together with our findings on the sizes of markets, which are increasingly made up of speculators, it appears at least possible that financialisation has made food markets more vulnerable to disturbances in financial markets.

Hedge funds report performance information voluntarily. When they stop reporting they are transferred from the "live" pool of funds to the "defunct" pool. Consequently, liquidated funds constitute a subset of the defunct pool. I present models of hedge fund survival, attrition, and survivorship bias based on liquidation alone. This refines estimates of predictor variables in models of survival, leads to attrition rates of hedge funds to be roughly one half those previously thought, and produces larger estimates of survivorship bias. Survival models based on liquidated funds only, lead to an increase in survival time of 50 to 100 percent relative to survival based on all defunct funds. / In addition to refining estimates of survival time, it is useful to examine how the double fee structure of hedge funds and Commodity Trading Advisors (CTA) affects the incentives of their managers. Young CTAs are usually very small --- they hold few financial assets --- and may not meet their operating expenses with their management fee alone, so their incentive is to take on risk and post good returns. As they grow, their incentive to take on risk diminishes. CTAs in their fifth year diminish their volatility by 25 percent relative to their first year, and diminish returns by 70 percent. We find CTAs to behave more like indexers as they grow, concerned with more with capital preservation than asset management. / Operational risk is a major cause of hedge fund and CTA liquidation. In the banking industry, regulators have called upon institutions to develop models for measuring capital charge for operational losses, and to subject these models to stress testing. Losses are found to be inversely related to GDP growth, and positively related to unemployment. Since losses are thus cyclical, one way to stress test models is to calculate capital charge during good and bad economic regimes. We find loss distributions to have thicker tails during bad regimes. One implication is that banks will likely need to increase their capital charge when economic conditions deteriorate.

Thesis (M.S.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Agricultural Economics. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

O trabalho analisou o impacto da introdução dos contratos futuros agropecuários (de café arábica, soja, milho, açúcar cristal, etanol e boi gordo), negociados na Bolsa de Valores, Mercadorias e Futuros - BM&FBOVESPA, no risco e no retorno de uma carteira diversificada, composta por ações, títulos, ouro e dólar, entre agosto de 1994 e dezembro de 2007, sendo realizados estudos para o intervalo de tempo completo e para subdivisões de dois e três períodos, além de uma análise bianual. Foram consideradas diferentes estratégias com tais derivativos: posições estáticas (comprada ou vendida em contratos de primeiro vencimento ou de vencimentos superiores a seis meses), dinâmicas (com a utilização de médias móveis para se definir pela compra ou venda dos papéis em questão) e a partir de fundos de investimentos nacionais, que utilizam estes títulos em seus portfólios. Buscou-se ainda mensurar como a utilidade dos investidores foi alterada, considerando as composições ótimas da carteira e diferentes graus de aversão ao risco de tais agentes. Com o uso da Teoria do Portfólio, verificou-se que: a) as estratégias estáticas de compra e de venda de futuros sobre commodities elevaram a performance da carteira diversificada quando realizada análise bianual e para os períodos 1994-1998 e 1999-2003 em alguns casos, observou-se redução no risco da carteira de até 70%, para certos níveis de retorno; b) a utilização destes derivativos em estratégias dinâmicas, baseadas em médias móveis, teve, em geral, impacto positivo na performance frente aos resultados da carteira original e daquela em que se introduziram posições estáticas; c) a introdução dos fundos de investimento Sparta e Guepardo, caracterizados pela utilização de derivativos agropecuários e pela adoção de uma gestão dinâmica, também elevou significativamente o desempenho do portfólio diversificado além de aumentar consideravelmente o retorno médio da carteira, constataram-se reduções de risco para certas faixas de rentabilidade de até 40%; d) os derivativos sobre commodities estiveram presentes em praticamente todas as carteiras que maximizaram a utilidade dos agentes (exceto para o período completo e entre 1994-2000) em geral, à medida que a aversão ao risco do investidor se elevava, a participação destes papéis no portfólio decrescia. Concluiu-se, portanto, que os derivativos sobre commodities, negociados na BM&FBOVESPA, constituíram-se em instrumentos capazes de elevar a performance de uma carteira diversificada para vários dos subperíodos considerados no estudo. Em geral, os maiores benefícios da introdução destes ativos no portfólio ocorreram em períodos relativamente mais curtos (biênios), dado o caráter cíclico dos preços dos produtos agropecuários. Além disso, os resultados apontam que o uso de análises técnicas e fundamentalistas pode elevar ainda mais o desempenho das carteiras que incluem posições compradas ou vendidas estáticas em futuros sobre commodities, já que a inserção de estratégias, que utilizaram simples instrumentos de análise técnica para definição do tipo de posições a assumir, e de fundos de commodities foi capaz de elevar significativamente a performance do investimento. / The work has analyzed the impact of including commodity futures (arabica coffee, soybean, corn, crystal sugar, ethanol and live cattle), negotiated at Securities, Commodity and Futures Exchange - BM&FBOVESPA, in the performance of a diversified portfolio, composed by stocks, bonds, gold and dollar, between August of 1994 and December of 2007, when were studied the complete time break and subdivisions of two and three periods, adding a biannual analysis. Different strategies with these derivatives were considered: i) passive positions - buy and hold or sell and hold contracts of first settlement or that took six months to maturity; ii) active positions for which ones there were used a trend technical rule to determine whether a futures contract should be held as a long or short position; iii) commodity futures funds. It was also aimed to measure how investors utility was modified, considering the optimal portfolios and different levels of risk aversion. Using the Portfolio Theory, it was verified that: a) the passive strategies enhanced the portfolio performance when were considered biannual analysis and over the time periods 1994-1998 and 1999-2003 in some cases, it was noticed reduction of 70% in the portfolio risk, for some levels of return; b) the use of these derivatives in active strategies, based on a trend rule, had, in general, positive impact in performance before the results of original portfolio and that ones in which there were introduced passive positions; c) the addition of Sparta and Guepardo funds, characterized by the use of commodity futures and by the adoption of a dynamic management, improved the diversified portfolio performance; d) the commodity futures were present in almost all portfolios that maximized the investors utility (except for the complete period between 1994-2000) in general, as the risk aversion increased, the participation of these papers in the portfolio decreased. Therefore, it was concluded that commodity futures, negotiated in BM&FBOVESPA, were constituted in instruments able to improve the portfolio performance for many of the sub-periods considered in the study. In general, the benefits of these introduction occurred in shorter periods (biennium), considering the cyclical character of agricultural commodity prices. Besides that, the results show that the use of technical and fundamentalist analysis can improve the performance of the portfolios that include passive positions in commodity futures, since the addition of strategies based on simple technical analysis and of commodity funds was able to improve the performance investment significantly.