IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbfina/v36y2012i9p2455-2472.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the diversification benefits of commodities from the perspective of euro investors

Author

Listed:
  • Belousova, Julia
  • Dorfleitner, Gregor

Abstract

This paper investigates the diversification contribution of several commodities to a portfolio of traditional assets from the perspective of a euro investor. The approach applied in our analysis has high informational content as it differentiates between the sources of the diversification benefits in a statistically significant way. The results indicate that the diversification contribution varies greatly amongst the different commodities. Industrial metals, agriculturals and livestock contribute to the reduction of risk, while energy and precious metals contribute to both the reduction of the level of risk and to the improvement of return. The differentiation between bull and bear markets reveals that investors can enhance the portfolio performance by changing exposure into individual commodities. Investors can benefit from the diversification gains through financial instruments as the diversification gains hold both in the sample of physical commodity and commodity futures. Overall, the results confirm that commodities are valuable investments from the perspective of diversification.

Suggested Citation

  • Belousova, Julia & Dorfleitner, Gregor, 2012. "On the diversification benefits of commodities from the perspective of euro investors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 2455-2472.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:36:y:2012:i:9:p:2455-2472
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2012.05.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037842661200129X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbankfin.2012.05.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hansen, Lars Peter, 1982. "Large Sample Properties of Generalized Method of Moments Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 1029-1054, July.
    2. Hammoudeh, Shawkat & Malik, Farooq & McAleer, Michael, 2011. "Risk management of precious metals," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(4), pages 435-441.
    3. Berndt, Ernst R & Savin, N Eugene, 1977. "Conflict among Criteria for Testing Hypotheses in the Multivariate Linear Regression Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(5), pages 1263-1277, July.
    4. Huberman, Gur & Kandel, Shmuel, 1987. "Mean-Variance Spanning," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(4), pages 873-888, September.
    5. Ferson, Wayne E & Foerster, Stephen R & Keim, Donald B, 1993. "General Tests of Latent Variable Models and Mean-Variance Spanning," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 131-156, March.
    6. Bolong Cao & Shamila Jayasuriya & William Shambora, 2010. "Holding a commodity futures index fund in a globally diversified portfolio: A placebo effect?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 30(3), pages 1842-1851.
    7. Ke Tang & Wei Xiong, 2012. "Index Investment and the Financialization of Commodities," Financial Analysts Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 68(6), pages 54-74, November.
    8. Harry Markowitz, 1952. "Portfolio Selection," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 7(1), pages 77-91, March.
    9. Galvani, Valentina & Plourde, André, 2010. "Portfolio diversification in energy markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 257-268, March.
    10. Silvennoinen, Annastiina & Thorp, Susan, 2013. "Financialization, crisis and commodity correlation dynamics," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 42-65.
    11. de Roon, F. A. & Nijman, T. E. & Werker, B. J., 1996. "Testing for Spanning with Futures Contracts and Nontraded Assets: A general Approach," SFB 373 Discussion Papers 1996,63, Humboldt University of Berlin, Interdisciplinary Research Project 373: Quantification and Simulation of Economic Processes.
    12. Bekaert, Geert & Urias, Michael S, 1996. "Diversification, Integration and Emerging Market Closed-End Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(3), pages 835-869, July.
    13. Merton, Robert C., 1972. "An Analytic Derivation of the Efficient Portfolio Frontier," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(4), pages 1851-1872, September.
    14. Breusch, T S, 1979. "Conflict among Criteria for Testing Hypotheses: Extensions and Comments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(1), pages 203-207, January.
    15. Daskalaki, Charoula & Skiadopoulos, George, 2011. "Should investors include commodities in their portfolios after all? New evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 2606-2626, October.
    16. Dietrich Domanski & Alexandra Heath, 2007. "Financial investors and commodity markets," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bessler, Wolfgang & Wolff, Dominik, 2015. "Do commodities add value in multi-asset portfolios? An out-of-sample analysis for different investment strategies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 1-20.
    2. Cotter, John & Eyiah-Donkor, Emmanuel & Potì, Valerio, 2017. "Predictability and diversification benefits of investing in commodity and currency futures," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 52-66.
    3. Fethke, Tobias & Prokopczuk, Marcel, 2018. "Is Commodity Index Investing Profitable?," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-635, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    4. Daskalaki, Charoula & Skiadopoulos, George & Topaloglou, Nikolas, 2017. "Diversification benefits of commodities: A stochastic dominance efficiency approach," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 250-269.
    5. Tim Schmitz & Ingo Hoffmann, 2020. "Re-evaluating cryptocurrencies' contribution to portfolio diversification -- A portfolio analysis with special focus on German investors," Papers 2006.06237, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2020.
    6. Peñaranda, Francisco & Sentana, Enrique, 2012. "Spanning tests in return and stochastic discount factor mean–variance frontiers: A unifying approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 170(2), pages 303-324.
    7. Raymond Kan & Guofu Zhou, 2012. "Tests of Mean-Variance Spanning," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 13(1), pages 139-187, May.
    8. Halil I. Memis & Steffen Sebastian, 2020. "Währungsabsicherung bei Immobilienaktien außerhalb des Euroraums [Currency hedging for real estate investments outside the Eurozone]," Zeitschrift für Immobilienökonomie (German Journal of Real Estate Research), Springer;Gesellschaft für Immobilienwirtschaftliche Forschung e. V., vol. 6(1), pages 47-63, April.
    9. Daskalaki, Charoula & Skiadopoulos, George, 2011. "Should investors include commodities in their portfolios after all? New evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 2606-2626, October.
    10. Galvani, Valentina & Plourde, André, 2013. "Spanning with futures contracts," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 61-72.
    11. Galvani, Valentina & Plourde, André, 2010. "Portfolio diversification in energy markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 257-268, March.
    12. Enrique Sentana, 2009. "The econometrics of mean-variance efficiency tests: a survey," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 12(3), pages 65-101, November.
    13. Gourieroux, C. & Monfort, A., 2005. "The econometrics of efficient portfolios," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 1-41, January.
    14. Jing-zhi Huang & Zhaodong Zhong, 2013. "Time Variation in Diversification Benefits of Commodity, REITs, and TIPS," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 152-192, January.
    15. Duc Khuong Nguyen & Nikolas Topaloglou & Thomas Walther, 2020. "Asset Classes and Portfolio Diversification: Evidence from a Stochastic Spanning Approach," Working Papers 2020-009, Department of Research, Ipag Business School.
    16. Bolong Cao & Shamila Jayasuriya & William Shambora, 2010. "Holding a commodity futures index fund in a globally diversified portfolio: A placebo effect?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 30(3), pages 1842-1851.
    17. Kabir, M. Humayun & Hassan, M. Kabir & Maroney, Neal, 2011. "International diversification with American Depository Receipts (ADRs)," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 98-114, January.
    18. Nijman, T.E. & de Roon, F.A., 2001. "Testing for mean-variance spanning : A survey," Other publications TiSEM 0159f80a-c61b-4519-b004-a, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    19. Bob Korkie & Harry J. Turtle, 2002. "A Mean-Variance Analysis of Self-Financing Portfolios," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 48(3), pages 427-443, March.
    20. Lu, Qinye & Vivian, Andrew, 2020. "Domestically formed international diversification," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Commodities; Asset allocation; Diversification; Spanning test; Step-down procedure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets
    • Q10 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:36:y:2012:i:9:p:2455-2472. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbf .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.