An Empirical Study on Dynamic Effects between Japanese Mini Gold Futures Market and Korean Mini Gold Markets

Abstract

Futures markets perform two importance roles, hedging of risks and price discovery. Hedging is protecting a position or anticipated position in the cash market by using and opposite position in futures. Price discovery is revealing of information about future cash market prices through the futures market. The effectiveness of hedging is dependent on the price discovery process or how well new information is reflected in price. In general, futures markets are found to respond faster to new information than spot markets since the transaction cost is lower and the degree of leverage attainable is higher. The price discovery mechanism is the process of determining the price of an asset in the marketplace through the interactions of available information including one market and other related markets. In dynamic markets, the price discovery takes place continuously. The price will sometimes fall below the average and sometimes exceed the average as a result of the noise due to uncertainties. So usually price discovery accepted an important research topic in finance helps find the exact price for an asset. The gold markets have been a steady increase in prices over the last decade. So, both the KRX and the TOCOM list the mini gold futures. Generally, mini contracts are smaller sized contracts that are designed to appeal to retail customers who cannot afford standard contracts. For example, the KRX offers gold (1,000g) and mini gold(100g) futures contracts. Also, mini contracts have been listed in various exchanges. Here, another important issue on market quality is the contribution to price discovery when the trading of an underlying asset is dispersed over multiple trading systems. This begs the question: does mini gold futures traded on an exchange can be used to predict gold prices traded on other exchange. This paper empirically examine whether both Korean gold markets and Japanese mini futures gold market are properly performing its economic function of price discovery by analyzing the prices between Japanese mini gold futures and Korean mini gold markets. Korean gold markets and Japanese mini gold futures market, for the period from October 1, 2010 to June 1, 2013 using daily data. Specifically, the study addresses three issues: (1) Japanese mini gold futures market has predictive power for Korean gold markets or vise versa; (2) if a variable have predictive power, how long does the variable in response to the various shocks; (3) how big does the proportion of the movements in a sequence due to its own shocks impacts to the other variable. The analysis employs the vector-autoregression, Granger causality, impulse response function and variance decomposition using daily returns on both two markets, Japanese mini gold futures, Korean mini gold futures, Korean mini spot, and Korean KODEX gold futures(H). Tools employed by VAR analysis-Granger causality, impulse response function and variance decomposition-can be helpful in understanding the interrelationships among economic variables. Granger causality actually measures whether current and past values help to forecast future values. So, a variable y is said to be Granger-caused by other variable x if x helps in the prediction of y. While impulse response functions trace the effects of a shock to one endogenous variable on to the other variables in the VAR, variance decomposition separates the variation in an endogenous variable into the component shocks to the VAR. The findings in this paper indicate that Japanese mini gold futures return has predictive power for Korean mini gold futures return from Granger causality test. But Korean mini gold futures return don’t has predictive power for Japanese mini gold futures return. This results makes clear that there is a one-way relationship in which Japanese mini gold futures return affects Korean mini gold futures return.