The role of trading volume, open interest and trader positions on volatility transmission between spot and futures markets

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the role of open interest, trading volume and trading positions of trader groups on volatility spillover between futures and spot markets of two major commodities; oil and gold during the last two decades. The initial analysis including only spot and futures markets imply that the relationship is bi-directional for crude oil, and uni-directional for gold. Though, including open interest and trading volume enrich our results indicating open interest and spot markets are closely connected and trading volume provide cross-market information, which might suggest investors investing in both commodities make these markets informationally connected. Given the increasing presence of institutional investors in commodity markets during the sample period, we also check whether speculators lead to excess volatility in futures market as financialization proponents argue. Findings depict that actually the spillover is from futures market to speculators’ positions implying volatility in commodity markets is not attributable to speculators in the last two decades.