Hedge Portfolio Research Articles

Financial and energy exchange traded funds futures: an evidence of spillover and portfolio hedging

Financial and energy exchange traded funds futures: an evidence of spillover and portfolio hedging

Commodity hedging benefits: analyses among different financial assets

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the benefits of commodity hedging in the global stock index, bond and foreign currency (FX) portfolios.Design/methodology/approachThe authors compare various hedging strategies and factor transaction costs. The authors analyze equally weighted, dynamic hedging ratio, risk parity and reward to risk timing strategies. Volatilities are estimated using historical, GARCH(1,1), and APARCH(1,1) methods. In addition, the authors evaluate the portfolio's hedging performance (HP) based on four different dimensions: volatility (annualized standard deviation), Sharpe ratio (SR), HP, and high-low ratio (HL).FindingsThe authors observe different benefits of the commodity hedging strategy among financial assets (stocks, bonds or FX).The authors find that commodity hedging in the stock markets is the best option, if the authors optimize the hedging ratio using dynamic hedging from historical data. The authors also document that for stock portfolio managers, adding commodities will generate a more conservative strategy, whereas for bond and/or FX portfolio managers, adding commodities will generate a more aggressive strategy.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature by investigating commodity hedging in the global stock index, bond and FX portfolios. First, the authors provide details on the diversification benefits in the commodities. Second, the authors document the hedging strategy that is the best as a part of the diversification strategy by adding commodities. Third, the authors provide a practical analysis by reporting the financial assets portfolio that is appropriate for commodity hedging following the portfolio managers' objectives (e.g. reducing risks or improving the risk-reward ratio).

An accounting-based asset pricing model and a fundamental factor

This paper recasts the consumption asset pricing model in terms of accounting numbers that connect to consumption and the risk to consumption under accounting principles. The modeling yields an expected return measure that forecasts realized returns and the risk to those returns. It leads to the construction of a pricing factor from the accounting information. The factor performs well relative to extant factors in explaining cross-sectional returns. The factor return has negative correlation with the market portfolio and exhibits the property of protecting payoffs in bad states when consumption is low. This then prompts a two-factor representation that combines the market portfolio with a hedge portfolio against loss to consumption.

Organization capital effect in stock returns—The role of R&D

AbstractPrevious studies document a strong organization capital effect in stock returns. We investigate whether and how research and development (R&D) activities affect this organization capital effect. We find that the organization capital effect is stronger in firms with R&D activities. The annual abnormal return of the hedge portfolio sorted by organization capital is 2.41% for R&D firms but only 0.41% for non‐R&D firms. Further analyses show that the organization capital effect can be attributed to R&D characteristics rather than R&D risk factors.

Volatility spillovers between fine wine and major global markets during COVID-19: A portfolio hedging strategy for investors

Motivated by the growing necessity of portfolio diversification, this paper investigates the dynamic connectedness among fine wine, equities, bonds, crude oil, commodities, gold, copper, shipping and real estate by applying the Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) approach, based on the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) model of Antonakakis et al. (2020), for the period 1/1/2010-5/31/2021. Our results indicate moderate volatility spillovers among the markets over time, whereas total connectedness is prone to exogenous shocks, reaching its peak during stress periods. Equities, crude oil, gold and fine wine are the net contributors of spillovers, whereas real estate, commodities, copper, bonds and shipping constitute the net receivers of the diffused shocks. Furthermore, we estimate and compare the hedging ability of fine wine, before and after the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic, to instruct investors in rebalancing their portfolio strategies during COVID-19. The empirical findings suggest that fine wine can form an effective hedging tool to reduce the risk deriving from adverse movements of the markets and its hedging ability was enhanced during COVID-19, with few exceptions. Regardless time period, the highest hedging effectiveness can be achieved by taking a long position in the volatility of crude oil and a short position in the volatility of fine wine.

Time-Discrete Hedging of Down-and-Out Puts with Overnight Trading Gaps

Hedging down-and-out puts (and up-and-out calls), where the maximum payoff is reached just before a barrier is hit that would render the claim worthless afterwards, is challenging. All hedging methods potentially lead to large errors when the underlying is already close to the barrier and the hedge portfolio can only be adjusted in discrete time intervals. In this paper, we analyze this hedging situation, especially the case of overnight trading gaps. We show how a position in a short-term vanilla call option can be used for efficient hedging. Using a mean-variance hedging approach, we calculate optimal hedge ratios for both the underlying and call options as hedge instruments. We derive semi-analytical formulas for optimal hedge ratios in a Black–Scholes setting for continuous trading (as a benchmark) and in the case of trading gaps. For more complex models, we show in a numerical study that the semi-analytical formulas can be used as a sufficient approximation, even when stochastic volatility and jumps are present.

Are timber and water investments safe-havens? A volatility spillover approach and portfolio hedging strategies for investors

Using a time-varying spillover approach, we investigate volatility spillovers between natural alternative investments, i.e. timber and water, and a battery of traditional instruments comprising equities, bonds, crude oil, gold, real estate, shipping and currency, for the period 1/1/2010–9/30/2021. Results show that the sample markets are moderately integrated and total connectedness escalated during stress periods. Moreover, we examine the hedging ability of timber and water by constructing optimal hedge ratios and portfolio weights. Both assets constitute an effective hedging tool for shipping, crude oil and bond investors, with the short position in the volatility of water to provide higher hedging effectiveness.

A Quantity-Based Approach to Constructing Climate Risk Hedge Portfolios

A Quantity-Based Approach to Constructing Climate Risk Hedge Portfolios

A Quantity-Based Approach to Constructing Climate Risk Hedge Portfolios

A Quantity-Based Approach to Constructing Climate Risk Hedge Portfolios

Do Volatilities Matter in the Interconnectedness between World Energy Commodities and Stock Markets of BRICS?

Financial markets integration has resulted in high interconnectedness among the BRICS stock markets, which minimizes diversification potentials. This has increased investors’ interest in the financialization of commodities to minimize their portfolio risks. However, the comovements between these assets do not operate in a vacuum, which requires that the role of volatilities be considered in tandem. The purpose of this study is to explore the interdependencies between energy commodities and stock markets of BRICS in the midst of relevant volatilities. For this reason, the wavelet techniques, biwavelet and partial wavelet, are employed. We find that positive comovements between energy commodities and stock markets of BRICS become stronger in the long‐term. Furthermore, volatility has a long‐term impact on the correlations between energy commodities and the BRICS stock market. We argue that the US Volatility Index, which measures investor anxiety and volatility in stock markets, has the biggest impact on the relationship between energy commodities and BRICS stock markets. Surprisingly, the correlations between energy commodities and Russian stock markets were strong enough to withstand the effects of volatilities. Hence, investors can use volatilities to hedge portfolio risks in energy commodities and stock markets in Brazil, India, China, and South Africa.

Pricing and hedging bond options and sinking-fund bonds under the CIR model

<abstract><p>This article derives simple closed-form solutions for computing Greeks of zero-coupon and coupon-bearing bond options under the CIR interest rate model, which are shown to be accurate, easy to implement, and computationally highly efficient. These novel analytical solutions allow us to extend the literature in two other directions. First, the static hedging portfolio approach is used for pricing and hedging American-style plain-vanilla zero-coupon bond options under the CIR model. Second, we derive analytically the comparative static properties of sinking-fund bonds under the same interest rate modeling setup.</p></abstract>

Model Risk in Bond Portfolio Hedging

Model Risk in Bond Portfolio Hedging

Frequency Volatility Connectedness and Portfolio Hedging of U.S. Energy Commodities

Frequency Volatility Connectedness and Portfolio Hedging of U.S. Energy Commodities

Approximation and comparison of the empirical liquidity cost function for various futures contracts

The article is dedicated to the study and comparison of the empirical liquidity cost function for various futures contract. The function is determined by the current state of the limit order book (LOB). Comparing the liquidity cost of futures contracts, we suggest the use of the initial margin instead of the number of lots or asset units. The form of the empirical liquidity cost function is obtained and a number of approximations for practical use are proposed. The approximations were achieved by quadratic, linear and power functions. The explanation of the difference in the distribution of the values of the liquidity cost function depending on the required initial margin is proposed. These results can be used for optimal execution of large orders, including portfolio hedging.

Are ESG stocks safe-haven during COVID-19?

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate safe-haven properties of environmental, social and governance (ESG) stocks in global and emerging ESG stock markets during the times of COVID-19 so that portfolio managers and equity market investors could decide to use ESG stocks in their portfolio hedging strategies during times of health and market crisis similar to COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses a wavelet coherence framework on four major ESG stock indices from global and emerging stock markets, and two proxies of COVID-19 fear over the period from 5 February 2020 to 18 March 2021.FindingsThe results of the study show a positive co-movement of the global COVID-19 fear index (GFI) with ESG stock indices on the frequency band of 32 to 64 days, which confirms hedging and safe-haven properties of ESG stocks using the health fear proxy of COVID-19. However, the relationship between all indices and GFI is mixed and inconclusive on a frequency of 0–8 days. Further, the findings do not support the safe-haven characteristics of ESG indices using the market fear proxy (IDEMV index) of COVID-19. The robustness analysis using the CBOE VIX as a proxy of market fear supports that ESG indices do not possess safe-haven properties. The results of the study conclude that the safe-haven properties of ESG indices during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is contingent upon the proxy of COVID-19 fear.Practical implicationsThe findings have important implications for the equity investors and assetty managers to improve their portfolio performance by including ESG stocks in their portfolio choice during the COVID-19 pandemic and similar health crisis. However, their investment decisions could be affected by the choice of COVID-19 proxy.Originality/valueThe authors believe in the originality of the paper due to following reasons. First, to the best of the knowledge, this is the first study investigating the safe-haven properties of ESG stocks. Second, the authors use both health fear (GFI) and market fear (IDEMV index) proxies of COVID-19 to compare whether safe-haven properties are characterized by health fear or market fear due to COVID-19. Finally, the authors use the wavelet coherency framework, which not only takes both time and frequency dimensions of the data into account but also remains unaffected by data stationarity and size issues.

Hedging Effectiveness of Commodity Futures Contracts to Minimize Price Risk: Empirical Evidence from the Italian Field Crop Sector

Over the last years, farmers have been increasingly exposed to income risk due to the volatility of the commodities prices. Among others, hedging in futures markets (i.e., financial markets) represents an available strategy for producers to cope with income risks at farm level. To better understand the advantages of such promising tools, this paper aims at analyzing the hedging effectiveness for soybean, corn and milling wheat producers in Italy. Following the literature, three different methodologies (i.e., naïve, OLS, GARCH) are applied for the estimation of the hedge portfolio, then compared to an unhedged portfolio for assessing the income risk reduction. Findings confirm the hedging effectiveness of futures contracts for all the considered commodities, showing also that this effect increases with longer hedge horizons, and also showing better performances for the European exchange market (i.e., Euronext), compared to the North American counterpart.

The cost of overconfidence in public information

We investigate the effects of investor overconfidence in public information on cross-sectional asset returns. The results show that investors in the US equity market are overconfident about public signals for mature firms that are relatively easy to price—old, large, and dividend-paying firms, value firms, and firms with a higher proportion of tangible assets, little external financing, and low sales growth. However, the effects of the overconfidence on cross-sectional stock returns are reversed quickly and comprise more than half of the short-term return reversals. The risk-adjusted cost of being overconfident about the noisy public signals, measured by return reversals of hedge portfolios formed on unexpected responses, is over 1.1% per month in the first month after portfolio formation, and is still significant despite the active arbitrage trading in the 2000s.

Interdependence dynamics of corporate equity and public real estate markets

PurposeWith growing interdependence between financial markets, the goal of this paper is to examine the dynamic interdependence between corporate equity and public real estate markets for the USA and a select group of seven European developed economies under a cross-country framework in crisis and boom market conditions. Dynamic interdependence is related to four measures of market linkages of “correlation, spillover, connectedness and causality”.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a four-step investigation. The authors first estimate “time-varying variance–covariance spillovers and implied correlations” modeled with the bivariate BEKK-MGARCH methods. Second, the methods of Diebold and Yilmaz (2012, 2014) measure the conditional volatility spillover-connectedness effects across the corporate equity and public real estate markets based on a decomposition of the forecast error variance. Third, the authors implement nonlinear bivariate and multivariate causality tests to understand the lead-lag dynamics of the two asset markets' returns, volatilities and net directional volatility connectedness across different sample periods. Finally, the authors conclude the study by providing a portfolio hedging analysis.FindingsThe authors find that corporate equity and public real estate are moderately interdependent to the extent that their diversification benefits increases in the longer term. Moreover, the authors find increased corporate equity-public real estate causal dependence of the market groups of the European and international portfolios during the GFC and INTERCRISIS periods. The nonlinear causality test findings indicate that the joint information of asset markets can be a useful source of prediction for future innovation of market risks. Additionally, policy makers may also be able to employ conditional volatility and volatility connectedness as two other measures to manage market stability in the cross-asset market dependence during highly volatile periods.Research limitations/implicationsOne major take away from this academic research is since international portfolio investors are not only concerned the long-term price relationship but also the correlation structure and volatility spillover-connectedness, the conditional BEKK modeling, generalized risk connectedness analysis and nonlinear causal dependence explorations from this multi-country study can shed fresh light on the nature of market interdependence and magnitude of volatility connectedness effects in a multi-portfolio framework.Practical implicationsThe hedging performance analysis for portfolio diversification and risk management indicates that industrial stocks (“pure” equities) are valuable assets that can improve the hedging performance of a well-diversified corporate equity-public real estate portfolio during crisis periods. For policymakers, the findings provide important information about the nature of causal links and predictability during the crisis and asset-market boom periods. They can then equip with this information to manage and coordinate market stability in cross corporate equity-real estate relationships effectively.Originality/valueAlthough traditional research has in general reported at least a moderate degree of relationship between the two asset markets, investors' knowledge of stock-public real estate market linkage is somewhat inadequate and confine mostly to broad stocks (i.e. stocks that are exposed to public real estate influence) in a single-country context. In this paper, the authors examine the interdependence dynamics in a multi-country (multi-portfolio) context. A clear understanding their changing market relationships in a multi-country context is of crucial importance for portfolio investors, financial institutions and policy makers. Moreover, since the authors use an orthogonal stock market index, the authors allow global investors to understand the potential diversification benefits from stock markets that are beyond the public real estate market under different market conditions.

Hedging the Risks of MENA Stock Markets with Gold: Evidence from the Spectral Approach.

In this paper, we contribute to the old debate on the dynamic correlation between gold and stock markets by considering a spectral approach within the framework of portfolio hedging. Specifically, we consider eight MENA stock markets (Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman) and examine the optimal composition between gold and the stock market index, with a minimum portfolio risk and a high expected return. Based on the spectral approach, we propose seven portfolio structures and evaluate them through a comparison with the conventional DCC-GARCH method and the most best 10 portfolios constructed by using wavelet approach. The main results show that the spectral-based approach outperforms the DCC-GARCH and the wavelet methods. In fact, the optimal gold-stock composition depends on the spectral density of each stock market index, where a stock market index with a stable spectral density requires more investments in gold than a stock market index with an unstable spectral density.

Hedging Long-Dated Oil Futures and Options Using Short-Dated Securities—Revisiting Metallgesellschaft

Since the collapse of the Metallgesellschaft AG due to hedging losses in 1993, energy practitioners have been concerned with the ability to hedge long-dated linear and non-linear oil liabilities with short-dated futures and options. This paper identifies a model-free non-parametric approach to extrapolating futures prices and implied volatilities. When we expand the analysis to implementing hedge portfolios for long-dated futures or option contracts over the time period 2007–2017, we utilize the useful benchmark of hedge ratios arising from Schwartz and Smith. With respect to the empirical consequences of hedging long-dated futures and options with their short-dated counterparts, we find that the long-term tracking errors are, on average, quite close to zero, but there is increasing risk entailed in attempting to do so, as the hedge-tracking errors for both futures and option contracts increase with time-to-maturity.