Gold-mining stocks, risk factors, and tail patterns

Abstract

The asset pricing literature typically focuses on the average relationship between risk factors and individual or portfolio stock returns. In the case of gold and gold-mining stocks, researchers report that gold-mining stocks are far more sensitive to gold returns than they are to stock market returns. In other words, gold-mining stocks behave more like gold than stocks. We examine how the tail behavior of a set of 25 widely used risk factors, including gold returns, affects the tail behavior of individual gold-mining stock returns. The evidence suggests that in their tail behavior, gold-mining stocks behave more like gold than they behave like common stocks.