Re-examining the real option characteristics of gold for gold mining companies

Abstract

This paper re-examines the static and time-varying asymmetries in quantile-specific relationship between gold returns and gold mining companies' stock returns. In doing so, we use novel cross-quantilogram approach that is built on quantiles of both distributions and control for the effect of crude oil price changes, overall stock market movements, stock market volatility and economic policy uncertainty. We find that the gold returns negatively predict the gold stock returns around the median quantile. Whereas the gold returns positively depend on the gold mining companies’ stock returns in the low and high quantiles. We therefore, support for an embedded real option in gold for gold mining companies which is time-varying and occurs in very short-run. This finding is useful for devising portfolio allocation and diversification strategies.