Do shipping freight markets impact commodity markets?

Abstract

The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is mostly perceived as the leading indicator of shipping freight market and economic activity. In this study, we investigate the dependence structure and distributional predictability between BDI and nineteen major commodity investable indices to offer insights on the predictive ability of BDI for commodity assets. In addition, we explore the effects of policy uncertainty and geopolitical risk on the dynamic dependence structure between BDI and commodities futures. To this end, we apply time-varying Markov switching copula models and non-parametric causality in quantile approach to daily closed price indices of commodities futures running from 23rd May 2006 to 20th November 2020. We provide for the first-time empirical evidence of time-varying Markov tail dependence structure dynamics between marine activities and commodities futures. The nature of the dependence is positives except for petroleum, all metals, livestock wheat, cattle and softs markets. Furthermore, we show the significant effects of global uncertainties, policy uncertainty and geopolitical risk on the dependence between sea transport and commodity assets. Finally, we note from the causality-in-mean and causality-in-variance analysis that the daily change of BDI is an efficient predictor (informational efficiency) of the daily changes of most of the commodity indices. Finally, we show that markets.