Testing for asymmetric causality from U.S. equity returns to commodity futures returns

This paper shows that fluctuations in the U.S. equity returns signal information about the behavior of the returns of energy, metal and agricultural commodity futures. We find that asymmetry plays an important role in this relationship. In addition, while asymmetry seems to be more relevant for metal commodities in the nineties, it emerges more powerfully for agricultural commodities since 2000. Moreover, the asymmetric linkages are observed both when returns are measured in nominal and real terms and at different time horizons, even though they are especially strong in the case of short-term commodity futures returns.