IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-01879667.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is Bitcoin a hedge, a safe haven or a diversifier for oil price movements? A comparison with gold

Author

Listed:
  • Refk Selmi

    (CATT - Centre d'Analyse Théorique et de Traitement des données économiques - UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour)

  • Walid Mensi

    (SQU - Sultan Qaboos University)

  • Shawkat Hammoudeh

    (Drexel University, Groupe Sup de Co Montpellier (GSCM) - Montpellier Business School)

  • Jamal Bouoiyour

    (CATT - Centre d'Analyse Théorique et de Traitement des données économiques - UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour)

Abstract

This study assesses the roles of Bitcoin as a hedge, a safe haven and/or a diversifier against extreme oil price movements, in comparison to the corresponding roles of gold. We use a quantile-on-quantile regression approach to capture the dependence structure between the considered market returns under different Bitcoin market conditions, while considering nuances of oil price movements, compared to gold. Our findings show that both Bitcoin and gold would serve the roles of a hedge, a safe haven and a diversifier for oil price movements. However, this property seems to be sensitive to the Bitcoin's and gold's different (bear, normal or bull) market conditions and to whether the oil price is in a downside, normal or upside regime. By controlling for new and relevant U.S. and global uncertainty indicators, we confirm that both Bitcoin and gold, but not oil, are assets where investors may park their cash during times of political and economic turmoil. The conditional Value-at-Risk (CoVaR) approach to risk management is then conducted, providing robust evidence of the usefulness of each of the Bitcoin and gold in expanded oil portfolios, in terms of diversification opportunities and downside risk reductions.

Suggested Citation

  • Refk Selmi & Walid Mensi & Shawkat Hammoudeh & Jamal Bouoiyour, 2018. "Is Bitcoin a hedge, a safe haven or a diversifier for oil price movements? A comparison with gold," Post-Print hal-01879667, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01879667
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2018.07.007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dirk G. Baur & Brian M. Lucey, 2010. "Is Gold a Hedge or a Safe Haven? An Analysis of Stocks, Bonds and Gold," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 45(2), pages 217-229, May.
    2. Paul Alagidede & Theodore Panagiotidis, 2010. "Can common stocks provide a hedge against inflation? Evidence from African countries," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(3), pages 91-100, August.
    3. Ricardo J. Caballero & Arvind Krishnamurthy, 2008. "Collective Risk Management in a Flight to Quality Episode," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(5), pages 2195-2230, October.
    4. P. Hartmann & S. Straetmans & C. G. de Vries, 2004. "Asset Market Linkages in Crisis Periods," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 313-326, February.
    5. Antonakakis, Nikolaos & Chatziantoniou, Ioannis & Filis, George, 2014. "Dynamic Spillovers of Oil Price Shocks and Policy Uncertainty," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 166, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    6. Bouoiyour, Jamal & Selmi, Refk & Tiwari, Aviral Kumar & Shahbaz, Muhammad, 2015. "The nexus between oil price and Russia's real exchange rate: Better paths via unconditional vs conditional analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 54-66.
    7. Bampinas, Georgios & Panagiotidis, Theodore, 2015. "Are gold and silver a hedge against inflation? A two century perspective," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 267-276.
    8. Jamal Bouoiyour & Refk Selmi & Aviral Kumar Tiwari & Olaolu Richard Olayeni, 2016. "What drives Bitcoin price?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(2), pages 843-850.
    9. Kaul, Aditya & Sapp, Stephen, 2006. "Y2K fears and safe haven trading of the U.S. dollar," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 760-779, August.
    10. Bernanke, Ben & Gertler, Mark & Gilchrist, Simon, 1996. "The Financial Accelerator and the Flight to Quality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(1), pages 1-15, February.
    11. Rangan Gupta & Christian Pierdzioch & Refk Selmi & Mark E. Wohar, 2017. "Does Partisan Conflict Predict a Reduction in US Stock Market (Realized) Volatility? Evidence from a Quantile-on-Quantile Regression Model," Working Papers 201744, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    12. Lubos Pástor & Pietro Veronesi, 2012. "Uncertainty about Government Policy and Stock Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(4), pages 1219-1264, August.
    13. Kyle Jurado & Sydney C. Ludvigson & Serena Ng, 2015. "Measuring Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 1177-1216, March.
    14. Baur, Dirk G. & McDermott, Thomas K., 2010. "Is gold a safe haven? International evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 1886-1898, August.
    15. Jamal Bouoiyour & Refk Selmi, 2017. "The Bitcoin price formation: Beyond the fundamental sources," Working Papers hal-01548710, HAL.
    16. Xiao, Zhijie & Koenker, Roger, 2009. "Conditional Quantile Estimation for Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity Models," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 104(488), pages 1696-1712.
    17. Balcilar, Mehmet & Gupta, Rangan & Pierdzioch, Christian, 2016. "Does uncertainty move the gold price? New evidence from a nonparametric causality-in-quantiles test," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 74-80.
    18. Kang, Wensheng & Ratti, Ronald A., 2013. "Structural oil price shocks and policy uncertainty," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 314-319.
    19. Bouri, Elie & Gupta, Rangan & Tiwari, Aviral Kumar & Roubaud, David, 2017. "Does Bitcoin hedge global uncertainty? Evidence from wavelet-based quantile-in-quantile regressions," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 87-95.
    20. Jamal Bouoiyour & Refk Selmi, 2015. "What Does Bitcoin Look Like?," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 16(2), pages 449-492, November.
    21. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 1998. "Estimating and Testing Linear Models with Multiple Structural Changes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(1), pages 47-78, January.
    22. Jamal Bouoiyour, Refk Selmi, 2018. "Are UK industries resilient in dealing with uncertainty? The case of Brexit," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 15(2), pages 277-292, December.
    23. Kang, Wensheng & Ratti, Ronald A., 2013. "Oil shocks, policy uncertainty and stock market return," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 305-318.
    24. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2016. "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1593-1636.
    25. Girardi, Giulio & Tolga Ergün, A., 2013. "Systemic risk measurement: Multivariate GARCH estimation of CoVaR," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 3169-3180.
    26. Neil Gandal & Hanna Halaburda, 2014. "Competition in the Cryptocurrency Market," Working Papers 14-17, NET Institute.
    27. Bouri, Elie & Molnár, Peter & Azzi, Georges & Roubaud, David & Hagfors, Lars Ivar, 2017. "On the hedge and safe haven properties of Bitcoin: Is it really more than a diversifier?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 192-198.
    28. Joscha Beckmann & Theo Berger & Robert Czudaj, 2019. "Gold price dynamics and the role of uncertainty," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(4), pages 663-681, April.
    29. Ruzhao Gao & Bing Zhang, 2016. "How does economic policy uncertainty drive gold--stock correlations? Evidence from the UK," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(33), pages 3081-3087, July.
    30. Sydney C. Ludvigson & Sai Ma & Serena Ng, 2021. "Uncertainty and Business Cycles: Exogenous Impulse or Endogenous Response?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 369-410, October.
    31. Kroner, Kenneth F & Ng, Victor K, 1998. "Modeling Asymmetric Comovements of Asset Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 11(4), pages 817-844.
    32. Elie Bouri & Naji Jalkh & Peter Molnár & David Roubaud, 2017. "Bitcoin for energy commodities before and after the December 2013 crash: diversifier, hedge or safe haven?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(50), pages 5063-5073, October.
    33. Koenker, Roger W & Bassett, Gilbert, Jr, 1978. "Regression Quantiles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 33-50, January.
    34. Luther, William J. & Salter, Alexander W., 2017. "Bitcoin and the bailout," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 50-56.
    35. Ciner, Cetin & Gurdgiev, Constantin & Lucey, Brian M., 2013. "Hedges and safe havens: An examination of stocks, bonds, gold, oil and exchange rates," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 202-211.
    36. Takashi Miyazaki & Yuki Toyoshima & Shigeyuki Hamori, 2012. "Exploring the dynamic interdependence between gold and other financial markets," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(1), pages 37-50.
    37. Sim, Nicholas & Zhou, Hongtao, 2015. "Oil prices, US stock return, and the dependence between their quantiles," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 1-8.
    38. Beckmann, Joscha & Berger, Theo & Czudaj, Robert, 2015. "Does gold act as a hedge or a safe haven for stocks? A smooth transition approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 16-24.
    39. Reboredo, Juan C., 2013. "Is gold a hedge or safe haven against oil price movements?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 130-137.
    40. Dyhrberg, Anne Haubo, 2016. "Hedging capabilities of bitcoin. Is it the virtual gold?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 16(C), pages 139-144.
    41. Diaz, Elena Maria & de Gracia, Fernando Perez, 2017. "Oil price shocks and stock returns of oil and gas corporations," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 75-80.
    42. Hou, Kewei & Tang, Ke & Zhang, Bohui, 2017. "Political Uncertainty and Commodity Prices," Working Paper Series 2017-25, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    43. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 2003. "Computation and analysis of multiple structural change models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 1-22.
    44. Reboredo, Juan C., 2013. "Modeling EU allowances and oil market interdependence. Implications for portfolio management," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 471-480.
    45. Roger Koenker & Zhijie Xiao, 2002. "Inference on the Quantile Regression Process," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1583-1612, July.
    46. Kang, Wensheng & Perez de Gracia, Fernando & Ratti, Ronald A., 2017. "Oil price shocks, policy uncertainty, and stock returns of oil and gas corporations," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 344-359.
    47. Osamah Al-Khazali & Elie Bouri & David Roubaud, 2018. "The impact of positive and negative macroeconomic news surprises: Gold versus Bitcoin," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 38(1), pages 373-382.
    48. Antonakakis, Nikolaos & Chatziantoniou, Ioannis & Filis, George, 2014. "Dynamic spillovers of oil price shocks and economic policy uncertainty," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 433-447.
    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. Bouoiyour, Jamal & Selmi, Refk & Wohar, Mark E., 2018. "Measuring the response of gold prices to uncertainty: An analysis beyond the mean," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 105-116.
    2. Feng, Hao & Gao, Da & Duan, Kun & Urquhart, Andrew, 2023. "Does Bitcoin affect decomposed oil shocks differently? Evidence from a quantile-based framework," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    3. Seyram Pearl Kumah & Jones Odei Mensah, 2022. "Are cryptocurrencies connected to gold? A wavelet‐based quantile‐in‐quantile approach," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(3), pages 3640-3659, July.
    4. Wang, Gang-Jin & Ma, Xin-yu & Wu, Hao-yu, 2020. "Are stablecoins truly diversifiers, hedges, or safe havens against traditional cryptocurrencies as their name suggests?," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    5. Badshah, Ihsan & Demirer, Riza & Suleman, Muhammad Tahir, 2019. "The effect of economic policy uncertainty on stock-commodity correlations and its implications on optimal hedging," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    6. Kang, Wensheng & Ratti, Ronald A. & Vespignani, Joaquin L., 2017. "Oil price shocks and policy uncertainty: New evidence on the effects of US and non-US oil production," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 536-546.
    7. Mokni, Khaled & Youssef, Manel & Ajmi, Ahdi Noomen, 2022. "COVID-19 pandemic and economic policy uncertainty: The first test on the hedging and safe haven properties of cryptocurrencies," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    8. Ren, Xiaohang & Wang, Rui & Duan, Kun & Chen, Jinyu, 2022. "Dynamics of the sheltering role of Bitcoin against crude oil market crash with varying severity of the COVID-19: A comparison with gold," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    9. Walid Bakry & Audil Rashid & Somar Al-Mohamad & Nasser El-Kanj, 2021. "Bitcoin and Portfolio Diversification: A Portfolio Optimization Approach," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-24, June.
    10. Selmi, Refk & Bouoiyour, Jamal & Wohar, Mark E., 2022. "“Digital Gold” and geopolitics," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    11. Chen, Peng & Miao, Xinru & Tee, Kai-Hong, 2023. "Do gold prices respond more to uncertainty shocks at the zero lower bound?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(PA).
    12. Ziadat, Salem Adel & McMillan, David G. & Herbst, Patrick, 2022. "Oil shocks and equity returns during bull and bear markets: The case of oil importing and exporting nations," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    13. Balcilar, Mehmet & Gupta, Rangan & Pierdzioch, Christian, 2016. "Does uncertainty move the gold price? New evidence from a nonparametric causality-in-quantiles test," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 74-80.
    14. Golitsis, Petros & Gkasis, Pavlos & Bellos, Sotirios K., 2022. "Dynamic spillovers and linkages between gold, crude oil, S&P 500, and other economic and financial variables. Evidence from the USA," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    15. Ahmed, Walid M.A., 2021. "Stock market reactions to upside and downside volatility of Bitcoin: A quantile analysis," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    16. Costantini, Mauro & Sousa, Ricardo M., 2022. "What uncertainty does to euro area sovereign bond markets: Flight to safety and flight to quality," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    17. Yin, Libo & Nie, Jing & Han, Liyan, 2021. "Understanding cryptocurrency volatility: The role of oil market shocks," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 233-253.
    18. Naeem, Muhammad Abubakr & Qureshi, Fiza & Arif, Muhammad & Balli, Faruk, 2021. "Asymmetric relationship between gold and Islamic stocks in bearish, normal and bullish market conditions," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    19. Urquhart, Andrew & Zhang, Hanxiong, 2019. "Is Bitcoin a hedge or safe haven for currencies? An intraday analysis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 49-57.
    20. Yong Jiang & Yi-Shuai Ren & Chao-Qun Ma & Jiang-Long Liu & Basil Sharp, 2018. "Does the price of strategic commodities respond to U.S. Partisan Conflict?," Papers 1810.08396, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2020.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Oil; Bitcoin and gold; Diversifier; hedge and safe haven; Quantile-on-quantile regression; CoVaR;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • C46 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Specific Distributions
    • C58 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Financial Econometrics

    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:hal:journl:hal-01879667. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.