Efficiency of Indian Commodity Market: A Survey of Brokers’ Perception

Abstract

The present study documents the finding of a survey of brokers' perception pertaining to the recently introduced commodity derivatives market in India. The survey results show the brokers' assessment about trading/marketing activities and their perception of the benefits and concerns about commodity derivatives. It also throw some light on the perception of brokers about the efficiency of Indian commodity derivatives in performing the functions of price discovery, hedging effectiveness and volatility dynamics. The survey results show that high net worth individual are contributing significantly in the trade volume of commodity derivatives. Interestingly, retail investors are also emerged as the significant contributor in total turnover of brokers. Survey results exhibit that price discovery and hedging effectiveness functions are well performed by all the commodity futures except the energy commodities futures. Energy commodities, being the most volatile commodities, are perceived as having less hedging effectiveness as compared to others. Brokers are assenting on the high to moderate impact of open interest, volume and time to maturity on the volatility of the commodity futures derivatives.