Professional Documents
Culture Documents
discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257474782
CITATIONS READS
53 324
2 authors, including:
Matthew Hood
Texas State University
14 PUBLICATIONS 105 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
All content following this page was uploaded by Matthew Hood on 29 July 2016.
Is gold the best hedge and a safe haven under changing stock market volatility?
Matthew Hood a, 1, Farooq Malik b,⁎
a
McCoy College of Business Administration, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX 78666, USA
b
College of Business, Zayed University, P. O. Box 19282, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: We evaluate the role of gold and other precious metals relative to volatility (Volatility Index (VIX)) as a hedge
Received 16 December 2011 (negatively correlated with stocks) and safe haven (negatively correlated with stocks in extreme stock market
Accepted 26 February 2013 declines) using data from the US stock market. Using daily data from November 1995 to November 2010, we
Available online 14 March 2013
find that gold, unlike other precious metals, serves as a hedge and a weak safe haven for US stock market. However,
we find that VIX serves as a very strong hedge and a strong safe haven during our sample period. We also find that
JEL classification:
G1
in periods of extremely low or high volatility, gold does not have a negative correlation with the US stock market.
Our results show that VIX is a superior hedging tool and serves as a better safe haven than gold during our sample
Keywords: period. We highlight the practical significance of our results for financial market participants by conducting a port-
Hedging folio analysis.
GARCH © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Volatility
Gold
Safe haven
Volatility shifts
1058-3300/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rfe.2013.03.001
Author's personal copy
Table 1
Descriptive statistics.
Notes: The sample is the 3777 daily returns from November 30, 1995 to November 30, 2010. The correlation for each asset is its correlation with the S&P 500. The annual geometric mean for
each asset is its effective annual rate of return over the entire sample period.
as a potential hedge or safe haven. This information will be particularly 2.1. Hedge
useful to financial market participants since volatility is readily tradable,
with Volatility Index (VIX) on the Chicago Board Options Exchange A strong (weak) hedge is defined as an asset that is negatively corre-
(CBOE) being the most prominent derivative.3 lated (uncorrelated) with another asset on average.
Conover et al. (2009) suggest that investors could considerably However, it has to be noted that a hedge does not necessarily have
improve portfolio performance by adding a significant exposure to the the property of reducing losses in periods of extremely declining markets
equities of precious metals firms. Riley (2010) shows that precious metals as the asset could exhibit a positive correlation in such periods and a
have advantages like good expected returns and strong negative correla- negative correlation in normal times which could result in a negative
tions with other asset classes. Additionally, studies like Hammoudeh, correlation on average.
Malik, and McAleer (2011) have highlighted the importance of other
precious metals besides gold in risk management. Given the growing 2.2. Safe haven
relevance of other precious metals, we also include silver and platinum
in our analysis to see how they compare with gold as a potential hedge A strong (weak) safe haven is defined as an asset that is negatively
or safe haven. correlated (uncorrelated) with the stock market in periods of extreme
The econometric approach in this paper is based on a regression stock market declines.
model in which asset returns (gold, silver, platinum, or volatility) are The specific property of a safe haven asset is the non-positive correla-
regressed on stock returns and interaction terms that test whether the tion with the stock market in extreme market conditions. However, note
particular asset indeed serves as a hedge or safe haven if the stock market that this property does not force the correlation to be positive or negative
declines. We use daily data from November 1995 to November 2010. Our on average but only to be zero or negative in specific periods of stock
sample period is particularly pertinent as it includes the recent financial market declines.
crises. A key feature of equity returns is that volatility is time varying
and undergoes shifts in variance [See Starica and Granger (2005)]. Conse- 3. Data analysis
quently, we also extend the literature by studying how these different
assets correlate with the stock market within the endogenously deter- The data consist of daily closing spot prices for gold, silver, platinum,
mined volatility regimes. the S&P 500 Index, and VIX. All the data used in the paper was obtained
Our results show that platinum and silver do not serve as a hedge or from Bloomberg. The data covers from November 30, 1995 to November
safe haven for the US stock market but gold serves both of these func- 30, 2010. Our sample period is particularly interesting since it includes
tions. Interestingly, VIX serves as a stronger hedge and a better safe the financial crisis of 2008–09. All precious metals are traded at
haven than gold during our sample period. We also find that gold does
not have a negative correlation with the US stock market in extremely
low volatility periods or in extremely high volatility periods, but VIX
maintains a negative correlation at all times. Our results suggest that
VIX is a superior hedging tool and serves as a better safe haven than
gold during our sample period. 4
2. Definitions
3
Exposures to volatility can be made by investing in VIX futures contract or an Ex-
change Traded Fund (ETF) on VIX. On the other hand, investment in gold can be made
through a variety of investments. An investor can buy gold coins, gold jewelry, gold
bullion, gold ETF or gold futures. There are more alternatives to invest in gold and some
of them offer investments without a counterparty (futures exchange or ETF provider)
involved with potentially strong implications for a safe haven asset. Fig. 1. Movement in levels of the S&P 500, gold and VIX. Notes: The figure shows the
4
Our results make a timely contribution as during the writing of this manuscript fi- level of the S&P 500 index, VIX and the price of gold for the 15 year sample period
nancial markets across the globe are experiencing unprecedented volatility and declin- from November 1995 to November 2010 (daily data). The S&P 500 index and price
ing returns mainly due to economic problems emanating from Europe. of gold are measured on left vertical axis while VIX is measured on right vertical axis.
Author's personal copy
Table 2 Table 3
Asset behavior in declining stock markets. Hedge and safe haven assessment.
S&P 500 −2.36% −3.06% −5.10% Gold −0.032** −0.070* −0.029 −0.202
Gold 0.11% 0.12% 0.56% Silver 0.000 0.011 0.084 0.027
Silver −0.28% −0.53% −0.45% Platinum 0.099*** 0.024 0.105** 0.217**
Platinum −0.23% −0.44% −0.60% VIX −3.303*** −4.534*** −4.015*** −3.595***
VIX 9.95% 11.68% 17.54%
Notes: The sample is the 3777 daily returns from November 30, 1995 to November 30,
Notes: The sample is the 3777 daily returns from November 30, 1995 to November 30, 2010. The estimation results for the role of gold, silver, platinum, and VIX as a hedge
2010. The table shows the average returns of each asset only for the worst 10%, 5%, and and safe haven asset for daily stock market returns. Negative coefficients in the
1% days for the S&P 500. Hedge column indicate that the asset is a hedge against stocks. Zero (negative) coeffi-
cients in extreme market conditions [quantile columns (0.10, 0.05, and 0.01)] indicate
that the asset is a weak (strong) safe haven. *, **, and *** represents statistical signifi-
COMEX in New York and their prices are measured in US dollars per troy cance at the 10% level, 5% level, and 1% level, respectively.
ounce. Within the family of volatility indices, the CBOE VIX is widely used
as a benchmark by investors. VIX expresses the 30-day implied volatility
extreme market conditions. We use the regression model proposed
generated from S&P 500 traded options and thus VIX represents a con-
by Baur and McDermott (2010) which is given as:
sensus view of short-term volatility in the equity market. The exact
time (Eastern Time) of closing price for gold, silver and platinum is Rasset;t ¼ a þ bt Rstock;t þ εt ð1Þ
1:30 pm, 1:25 pm and 1:05 pm, respectively, while S&P 500 Index and
the VIX closing value occurs at 4 pm. Although our use of the
bt ¼ c0 þ c1 DðRstock q10 Þ þ c2 DðRstock q5 Þ þ c3 DðRstock q1 Þ ð2Þ
non-synchronous metal return daily data with the S&P 500 is consistent
with the literature but we should point out that it biases against the
2
hedging potential of the metal indices versus the VIX. ht ¼ ω þ αεt−1 þ βht−1 ð3Þ
Table 1 provides descriptive statistics for all five series under study.
Among the precious metals and VIX, VIX has the highest arithmetic Eq. (1) models the relationship between each asset (gold, silver, plat-
mean on a daily basis but its annual geometric mean, which shows the inum, or VIX) and the stock returns. The parameters to estimate are a and
annual rate of return for the whole sample period, is the lowest. This bt. The error term is given by εt. The parameter bt is modeled as given by
low return is not surprising as volatility (VIX) has a mean reverting Eq. (2) and the parameters to estimate are c0, c1, c2, and c3. The dummy
behavior. Among the precious metals, we see that silver has the highest variables denoted as D(…) capture extreme stock market declines and
standard deviation while gold has the lowest. The standard deviation for are equal to one if the stock market crosses a certain threshold given
VIX is more than three times greater than any of the precious metals. by the tenth, fifth, and first percentiles of the return distribution of the
Gold exhibits positive skewness while silver and platinum exhibit nega- stock market. If one of the parameters c1, c2, or c3 is significantly different
tive skewness. All five series show high values of kurtosis, implying that a from zero, then there is evidence of a relationship between the particular
GARCH-type model is appropriate. The last row of Table 1 documents the asset and the stock market. If the parameters in Eq. (2) are negative and
correlation of each series with the S&P 500. Gold is the only precious statistically different from zero, the asset serves as a strong safe haven.
metal which is negatively correlated with the S&P 500. However, the However, if the parameters are non-positive, then the asset would be a
negative correlation of gold is trivial relative to VIX, which is strongly weak safe haven. The asset would serve as a hedge if the parameter c0
negatively correlated with the S&P 500. Fig. 1 plots the levels of the is zero (weak hedge) or negative (strong hedge) and the sum of the
S&P 500, VIX, and gold over the whole sample period. A careful review parameters c1 to c3 are not jointly positive exceeding the value of c0.
of the plot reveals the negative relationship between VIX and the S&P Finally, Eq. (3) presents a GARCH(1,1) model which is used to account
500 especially during 2008. for heteroscedasticity in the time series data. All equations are simulta-
Another key question in this study is how the precious metals and neously estimated using Maximum Likelihood methods.
VIX behave in conjunction with the S&P 500 on its worst performing
days. Panel A of Table 2 shows the average daily returns on the worst 5. Empirical results
1%, 5%, and 10% days for the S&P 500. We see that on the worst 1%
days of the S&P 500 it yields an average daily return of −5.10%.5 On In this section, we present the results from the model estimated
these days, gold and VIX yield a positive return of 0.56% and 17.54%, above. Table 3 shows the estimates of a regression model given by
respectively – both are positive but the return for VIX is substantially Eqs. (1), (2), and (3). The table contains the estimates of c0 and the
greater than for gold. On the worst days of the S&P 500, platinum and total effects for extreme market conditions, which is the sum of c0
silver tend to move in the same direction, which mitigates their effec- and c1 for the tenth percentile; the sum of c0, c1, and c2 for the fifth
tiveness as a hedge. Overall, we find that gold and VIX have negative re- percentile; and the sum of all four coefficient estimates (c0, c1, c2,
lationship with the stock market when the stock market is declining, and c3) for the first percentile.
but in order to find if that relationship is statistically significant, we pro- Looking at the hedge column, we find that both gold and VIX serve as
ceed to our econometric model. a strong hedge because they have a statistically significant negative
correlation with the S&P 500. However, looking at the corresponding
4. Econometric model coefficients, we find that VIX has a far bigger coefficient (in absolute
value) than gold which implies that it is a far more effective hedge
In this section, we present the econometric model which we use to than gold. Silver on the other hand is not correlated with the S&P 500
analyze the safe haven and hedge property of different assets relative while platinum has a significant positive correlation which implies that
to the overall stock market. We assume that the price of the asset in it not a hedge but co-moves with the overall stock market.
each case is dependent on changes in the stock market and further Table 3 also shows which assets are weak or strong safe havens
assume that the relationship is not constant but is influenced by and which provide no safe haven at all. We find that gold is a strong
safe haven at the 10% significance level. Specifically, we find that on
5
This is the average of the days’ returns that are in the first percentile, it is not the the worst days of the US stock market, gold correlates negatively
first percentile – which will be shown in Table 5. with the S&P 500. Neither silver nor platinum are safe havens.
Author's personal copy
Table 4
Relationship between VIX and precious metals with the S&P 500 in different volatility regimes.
Starting date 11/30/95 11/30/95 07/29/98 06/14/02 10/17/02 04/02/03 07/25/03 07/09/07 09/12/08 12/02/08 06/01/09
Ending date 11/30/10 07/29/98 06/14/02 10/17/02 04/02/03 07/25/03 07/09/07 09/12/08 12/02/08 06/01/09 11/30/10
All 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Means
S&P 500 0.03% 0.10% 0.00% −0.16% 0.01% 0.18% 0.05% −0.06% −0.65% 0.12% 0.07%
Gold 0.04% −0.04% 0.01% −0.01% 0.06% 0.10% 0.07% 0.05% 0.10% 0.21% 0.10%
Silver 0.06% 0.03% −0.01% −0.11% 0.02% 0.18% 0.11% −0.04% −0.09% 0.46% 0.17%
Platinum 0.05% 0.00% 0.05% 0.09% 0.06% 0.12% 0.07% −0.02% −0.55% 0.34% 0.10%
VIX 0.20% 0.27% 0.17% 0.64% −0.10% −0.47% 0.14% 0.43% 2.61% −0.52% 0.17%
Standard deviations
S&P 500 1.31% 0.93% 1.33% 2.26% 1.42% 1.05% 0.68% 1.32% 4.69% 2.36% 1.14%
Gold 1.09% 0.66% 0.94% 0.89% 1.10% 1.04% 1.11% 1.39% 3.11% 1.55% 1.05%
Silver 1.84% 1.57% 1.18% 1.02% 1.08% 1.08% 2.07% 2.20% 5.32% 2.36% 1.94%
Platinum 1.48% 1.18% 1.58% 1.13% 1.14% 1.31% 1.19% 1.84% 4.13% 1.83% 1.36%
VIX 6.16% 5.67% 5.83% 6.71% 4.62% 3.50% 5.84% 7.37% 12.57% 5.98% 6.87%
Notes: The sample period is from November 1995 to November 2010. The time periods of volatility regimes were estimated using ICSS algorithm.
However, we see that VIX is a strong safe haven in the case of extreme Erb, Harvey, and Viskanta (1994) show that the correlations among the
negative market shocks at all levels and the correlations are highly Group 7 countries are higher during recessions than during economic
significant. Thus the relationship of VIX to the stock market is much growth periods and Longin and Solnik (2001) show that the correlation
stronger than it is for gold. In the next section, we explore the rela- between markets increases during bear markets and this correlation is
tionship of different assets with the overall stock market under differ- related to the market trend.
ent stock market volatility regimes. It is also widely documented that markets experience periods where
volatility suddenly increases or decreases [See Starica and Granger
6. Evaluating correlations under changing stock market volatility (2005)]. Consequently, in this section we explore the correlations
between different assets with the overall stock market in different
Several studies have documented a change in correlations between volatility periods. In order to detect the relevant volatility periods or
markets over time. Solnik, Boucrelle and Fur (1996) document the in-
crease in correlations over time (1982 to 1995) and especially during
more volatile periods. Several other studies have examined the asym-
metric increase in correlations during declining markets. For example,
Table 5
Portfolio behavior in declining stock markets.
0% 5% 10% 15%
7. Portfolio analysis
stronger in times of market turmoil (high volatility period). Our overall Ewing, B. T., & Malik, F. (2005). Re-examining the asymmetric predictability of conditional
variances: The role of sudden changes in variance. Journal of Banking and Finance, 29,
results suggest that VIX is a superior hedging tool and serves as a better 2655–2673.
safe haven than gold during our sample period. Goetzmann, W. N., Li, L., & Rouwenhorst, K. G. (2005). Long-term global market corre-
lations. Journal of Business, 78, 1–38.
Hammoudeh, S., Malik, F., & McAleer, M. (2011). Risk management of precious metals.
Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 51, 435–441.
References Hillier, D., Draper, P., & Faff, R. (2006). Do precious metals shine? An investment per-
spective. Financial Analysts Journal, 62, 98–106.
Aggarwal, R., Inclan, C., & Leal, R. (1999). Volatility in emerging markets. Journal of Financial Inclan, C., & Tiao, G. C. (1994). Use of cumulative sums of squares for retrospective de-
and Quantitative Analysis, 34, 33–55. tection of changes of variance. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 89,
Baur, D. G., & Lucey, B. M. (2010). Is gold a hedge or a safe haven? An analysis of stocks, 913–923.
bonds and gold. Financial Review, 45, 217–229. Jaffe, J. F. (1989). Gold and gold stocks as investments for institutional portfolios. Finan-
Baur, D. G., & McDermott, T. K. (2010). Is gold a safe haven? International evidence. cial Analysts Journal, March/April, 53–59.
Journal of Banking and Finance, 34, 1886–1898. Longin, F., & Solnik, B. (2001). Extreme correlation of international equity markets.
Bekaert, G., & Wu, G. (2000). Asymmetric volatility and risk in equity markets. Review Journal of Finance, 56, 649–676.
of Financial Studies, 13, 1–42. Malik, F. (2011). Estimating the impact of good news on stock market volatility. Applied
Briere, M., Burgues, A., & Signori, O. (2010). Volatility exposure for strategic asset allocation. Financial Economics, 21, 545–554.
Journal of Portfolio Management, 36, 105–116. Riley, C. (2010). A new gold rush: Investing in precious metals. Journal of Investing, 19,
Campbell, J. Y., & Hentschel, L. (1992). No news is good news: An asymmetric model of 95–100.
changing volatility in stock returns. Journal of Financial Economics, 31, 281–318. Solnik, B., Boucrelle, C., & Fur, Y. L. (1996). International market correlation and volatility. Fi-
Christie, A. A. (1982). The stochastic behavior of common stock variances-Value, leverage nance Analyst Journal, 52, 17–34.
and interest rate effects. Journal of Financial Economics, 10, 407–432. Starica, C., & Granger, C. W. J. (2005). Nonstationarities in stock returns. Review of Economics
Conover, C. M., Jensen, G. R., Johnson, R. R., & Mercer, J. M. (2009). Can precious metals and Statistics, 87, 503–522.
make your portfolio shine? Journal of Investing, 18, 75–86. Whaley, R. E. (2009). Understanding the VIX. Journal of Portfolio Management, 35,
Erb, C. B., Harvey, C., & Viskanta, T. E. (1994). Forecasting international equity correlations. 98–105.
Finance Analyst Journal, 5, 32–45.