Skewness Strategies in Commodity Futures Markets

As a result, equities with positive skews tend to be overpriced and thus offer low expected returns, while equities with negative skews tend to be underpriced and thus offer high expected returns. While the pattern is well documented in the equity market literature (see, for example, Amaya et al., 2015, for some recent evidence), the question as to whether skewness matters to the pricing of commodity futures has not yet been addressed. This article is aimed at filling that gap in the literature by designing and analysing the performance of novel skewness strategies in commodity futures markets. Special attention is devoted to testing the robustness of our results and to the strategic role of the newly-designed skewness portfolio as an inflation hedge and as a risk diversifier.