Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Jump Processes In The Market For Crude Oil, Neil Wilmot, Charles Mason

Charles F Mason

In many commodity markets, the arrival of new information leads to unexpectedly rapid changes—or jumps—in commodity prices. Such arrivals suggest the assumption that log-return relatives are normally distributed may hold. Combined with time-varying volatility, the possibility of jumps offers a potential explanation for fat tails in oil price returns. This article investigates the potential presence of jumps and time-varying volatility in the spot price of crude oil and in futures prices. The investigation is carried out over three data frequencies (Monthly, Weekly, Daily), which allows for an investigation of temporal properties. Employing likelihood ratio tests to compare among four stochastic …