Risk premiums and predictive ability of BAX futures

Abstract

This study provides an in-depth analysis of risk premiums in the Canadian Bankers' Acceptances futures (BAX) market. The predictive regressions for excess and holding-period returns on BAX futures lend empirical support to the presence of time-varying risk premiums especially at longer horizons. Despite the evidence of time variation in the risk premium, however, the unbiasedness of the basis as a predictor of spot returns in forecast efficiency regressions cannot be rejected. The out-of-sample forecasts of spot returns demonstrate the excellent predictive ability of models that exploit the restrictions implied by the unbiasedness hypothesis. Overall, our findings support the presence of a slowly moving risk premium and entail important practical implications for measuring monetary policy expectations and portfolio allocation. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark