Hedging with commodity futures and the end of normal backwardation

Using the S&P GSCI and its five component sub-indices, we show that considering each commodity separately yields nontrivial hedging gains in and out of sample. During 1999–2019, the maximum Sharpe ratio portfolio assigns positive weights to the GSCI Energy, Industrial and Precious Metals, whereas only precious metals enter the optimal portfolio after the financial crisis. In out-of-sample optimizations based on dynamic conditional correlations, a subset of commodity futures excluding the GSCI Agriculture and Livestock outperforms conventional stock-bond portfolios with and without the overall GSCI. We argue that the "normal backwardation" in commodity markets has broken down during our sample period.