The Price Discovery Properties of Clean Tanker Freight Futures - Unbiasedness, Causality and Forecasting
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives NORWEGIAN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (NHH) Bergen, spring 2010 Master Profile: Financial Economics Advisors: Professor Siri Pettersen Strandenes and Associate Professor Jonas Andersson The Price Discovery Properties of Clean Tanker Freight Futures - Unbiasedness, Causality and Forecasting Audun Houmb Sjøli This thesis was written as a part of the master program at NHH. Neither the institution, the advisors, nor the sensors are - through the approval of this thesis - responsible for neither the theories and methods used, nor results and conclusions drawn in this work. NORWEGIAN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (NHH) Abstract The scope of this thesis is to examine the price discovery properties of clean tanker freight futures. This is conducted by testing the unbiasedness hypothesis, the lead-lag relationship between freight futures and spot rates and the forecasting properties of freight futures with regards to the underlying spot rates. The research focuses on the most liquid clean tanker freight futures, which are those written on the routes TC2, TC4 and TC5. The results indicate that unbiasedness depends on the route in question and time to maturity. For a one-month horizon of TC2 and one-, two- and three-month horizons of TC5, the unbiasedness hypothesis is found to hold. Unbiasedness is also indicated for the two- and three-month horizons of TC2, but due to weak evidence no conclusions are drawn. For TC4 the unbiasedness hypothesis is rejected. The results from testing the lead-lag relationship indicate that futures prices lead spot rates for all the routes, but the relationship is found to be bi-directional for TC4. When investigating the forecasting performance of end-of-month freight futures it is found that univariate models generally are outperformed by a random walk, indicating that forecasts should not be based on historic spot prices alone. The multivariate models confirm this finding as they generally produce more accurate forecasts than their univariate cousins. Multivariate time-series models were generally found able to outperform forecasts indicated by outright futures prices for one- and two-month horizons, but for a three-month horizon the futures performed as well as or better than the multivariate models. These results imply that the investigated freight futures contain valuable information about future spot rates. Problems regarding the stationarity of the series were experienced throughout the thesis. Because of this it is recommended that the tests performed in this thesis are repeated in a few years when more data is available. 2 NORWEGIAN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (NHH) Acknowledgements I would like to thank my advisors, Professor Siri Pettersen Strandenes and Associate Professor Jonas Andersson, for contributing to this thesis by sharing their extensive knowledge within shipping and econometrics, respectively. At Imarex I would like to thank Nils Arnesen and the tanker desk, Lene Refvik and Erlend Engelstad for providing data and insight on freight futures contracts and the freight futures market. At NOS I would like to thank Anette Bergvoll Nilsen for clarifying historic changes in the clearing procedures and for helping to make sure that the data used in this thesis is accurate. I would also like to thank Eirik Maanum and the clean tanker desk at Inge Steensland for their constructive inputs regarding the physical clean tanker market. At the Baltic Exchange I would like to thank William Lyth and Michael Ackerman for providing spot prices for the route TC2, and at Platts William Bathurst for answering questions regarding the spot prices of TC4 and TC5. I also appreciate the great service the staff at NHH library has provided. I am also very thankful to Tor Svelland and the commodity desk at Pareto Securities for sharing their broad experience on freight futures, and for making it possible for me to continue to explore this fascinating market. I would also like to thank Åge for providing the best atmosphere imaginable for writing this thesis and Henning Bjørneng Sagen for excellent technical support. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my family for supporting me through my whole education. This thesis is dedicated to Line Sofie. 3 NORWEGIAN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (NHH) Table of Contents 1. General Notes.............................................................................................................................. 6 1.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 6 1.2 Objective ............................................................................................................................... 7 1.3 Involved Parties ..................................................................................................................... 8 1.3.1 IMAREX ........................................................................................................................ 8 1.3.2 NOS ................................................................................................................................ 8 1.3.3 The Baltic Exchange ....................................................................................................... 9 1.3.4 Platts ............................................................................................................................... 9 1.3.5 The Worldscale Association ........................................................................................... 9 1.4 Outline ................................................................................................................................. 10 2. An introduction to freight futures ............................................................................................. 11 2.1 Forward Freight Agreements (FFAs) .................................................................................. 11 2.2 Freight Futures .................................................................................................................... 12 2.3 Worldscale ........................................................................................................................... 15 3. Freight futures and future spot rates ......................................................................................... 18 3.1 How the prices of freight futures are formed ...................................................................... 18 3.2 The price discovery function of freight futures ................................................................... 21 4. A Review of existing literature ................................................................................................. 22 4.1 The unbiasedness hypothesis .............................................................................................. 22 4.2 The lead-lag relationship between futures prices and spot rates ......................................... 23 4.3 Freight futures and their ability to forecast the underlying spot rates ................................. 24 5. Testing the unbiasedness hypothesis ........................................................................................ 27 5.1 How to test the unbiasedness hypothesis ............................................................................ 27 5.2 Properties of the data series ................................................................................................. 33 5.3 Results from testing the unbiasedness hypothesis ............................................................... 41 6. The lead-lag relationship between futures prices and spot rates ............................................... 54 6.1 How to test the lead-lag relationship ................................................................................... 54 6.2 Properties of the data series ................................................................................................. 56 6.3 Investigating the lead-lag relationship between spot and futures prices ............................. 60 6.4 Impulse Response Analyses ................................................................................................ 67 7. Freight futures and their ability to forecast the underlying spot rates ...................................... 73 4 NORWEGIAN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (NHH) 7.1 Introducing the time-series models and measures of forecasting accuracy ........................ 73 7.1.1 The models ................................................................................................................... 74 7.1.2 Measures of forecasting accuracy ................................................................................ 77 7.2 Properties of the data series ................................................................................................. 78 7.3 Evaluating the forecasting results ....................................................................................... 82 8. Summary and conclusions ........................................................................................................ 86 Readings ........................................................................................................................................ 88 Appendix I: IMAREX Freight Futures Product