The recent sharp increase in the prices of primary food commodities has raised serious concerns of policy makers on the role of index funds in these food markets. In this paper, we employ a dataset on trading positions of index fund investors from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission...

In this study, we investigate the determinants of convenience yields across a broad range of commodities. We find that the convenience yields of commodities are exposed to both commodity-specific and systematic factors, but to a different extent. The difference in explanatory power of these...

Using a comprehensive dataset of first, second and third generation commodity indices, we investigate the potential diversification benefits of commodities in equity–bond portfolios. To this end, different approaches of mean–variance spanning tests and out-of-sample portfolio optimization...

We contribute to the literature by analyzing forecast combination methods in the context of machine learning to predict equity returns. Whilst individual models lack robustness, forecast combinations display stability and are able to produce improved results with Sharpe ratios up to 3.16. We use...

We investigate the impact of product market competition on firms’ systematic risk. Using a measure of total product market similarity, we document a strong negative link between market power and market betas. There is a more than threefold increase in the effect during the most recent...

In this study, we investigate the cross-section of option implied tail risks in commodity markets. In contrast to findings from equity markets, left and right tail risk implied by option markets are both large. Commodity specific variables exert the largest influence on tail risk, while there is...