Does Financial Stress Affect Commodity Futures Traders’ Positions?

Financial stress can impact trading behavior in the U.S. commodity futures markets. To clarify the impact, we study absolute changes and relative exposure dynamics in traders' positions during two recent crises: the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the COVID-19 pandemic. The nature of these two crises are very distinct, and we find that traders behaved quite differently. The commodity market collapse during the 2008 GFC followed the classic pattern of a speculative bubble; speculators, including financial institutions and money managers, rushed to close their long positions in commodity futures while commodity producers or hedgers actively facilitated these trades. Consequently, the risk in commodity futures flowed from speculators back to producers. In sharp contrast, no evidence is found to support this type of risk flow during the COVID-19 crisis. Stress in the financial system was relatively mild compared with the 2008 GFC, and the commodity market experienced a strong rally early in the crisis. Both speculators and hedgers traded in an orderly fashion. In terms of traders' relative exposures, we find that the impact from financial stress was immaterial. We also find that speculators generally reacted to changing financial conditions more strongly than hedgers, during the period.