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Journal Article
What explains the growth in commodity derivatives?
This article documents the massive increase in trading in commodity derivatives over the past decade?growth which far outstrips the growth in commodity production and the need for derivatives to hedge risk by commercial producers and users of commodities. During the past decade, many institutional portfolio managers added commodity derivatives as an asset class to their portfolios. This addition was part of a larger shift in portfolio strategy away from traditional equity investment and toward derivatives based on assets such as real estate and commodities. Institutional investors? use of ...
Working Paper
Negative Correlation between Stock and Futures Returns: An Unexploited Hedging Opportunity?
The negative correlation between equity and commodity futures returns is widely perceived by investors as an unexploited hedging opportunity. A Lucas (1982) asset-pricing model is adapted to analyze the fundamentals driving equity and commodity futures returns. Using the model we argue that such a negative correlation could arise as an equilibrium relationship which reflects traders' perceptions about the shocks driving the fundamentals such as energy and consumables, and does not necessarily indicate any hedging opportunity.