Herding, anti-herding behaviour in metal commodities futures: a novel portfolio-based approach

The purpose of this article is twofold. Motivated by the heated debate on the financialization of commodities, we examine the existence of herding behaviour in metal commodities futures. In order to identify any time-dependent properties reflected in time-varying parameters, we employ the overlapping rolling window regression technique. The empirical evidence confirms a time-varying anti-herding behaviour before the global financial crisis and the absence of herding or anti-herding behaviour during the crisis. Next we attempt to formally establish the link between the documented anti-herding behaviour and portfolio management with the use of dynamic conditional correlations via the DCC-GARCH family multivariate modelling. After specifying the correlations, an in-sample recursive dynamic Markowitz portfolio is constructed and monitored. By doing so, we attribute the anti-herding behaviour to different portfolio positioning and rebalancing. On the other hand, in the absence of herding or anti-herding behaviour, we document a shift in the correlations and covariances of the commodity futures especially during the crisis, resulting in a decrease of the portfolio weights together with a substantial cash flow towards the risk-free asset.