Logo
Munich Personal RePEc Archive

Futures basis, inventory and commodity price volatility: An empirical analysis

Symeonidis, Lazaros and Prokopczuk, Marcel and Brooks, Chris and Lazar, Emese (2012): Futures basis, inventory and commodity price volatility: An empirical analysis.

[thumbnail of MPRA_paper_39903.pdf]
Preview
PDF
MPRA_paper_39903.pdf

Download (227kB) | Preview

Abstract

We employ a large dataset of physical inventory data on 21 different commodities for the period 1993-2011 to empirically analyze the behaviour of commodity prices and their volatility as predicted by the theory of storage. We examine two main issues. First, we explore the relationship between inventory and the shape of the forward curve. Low (high) inventory is associated with forward curves in backwardation (contango), as the theory of storage predicts. Second, we show that price volatility is a decreasing function of inventory for the majority of commodities in our sample. This effect is more pronounced in backwardated markets. Our findings are robust with respect to alternative inventory measures and over the recent commodity price boom period.

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact us: mpra@ub.uni-muenchen.de

This repository has been built using EPrints software.

MPRA is a RePEc service hosted by Logo of the University Library LMU Munich.