This paper is primarily motivated by the growing importance of
the gold market in the portfolio choice of an increasing number of
investors; both retail and institutional. In order for investors to
make rational portfolio optimization choices it is necessary to have
an understanding of how news events impact returns, and the conditions
that may influence the efficiency of market pricing. While
there is an extant literature concerning the relationship between
news sentiment and returns in the equity market this is the first
paper to consider this connection in the context of the gold futures
market. This is important because the institutional framework of
the gold futures market has distinctive characteristics that potentially
result in price efficiency being somewhat different to that
in the equity market. In particular, futures traders face constraints
in terms of position limits imposed by the exchange3
, margin
requirements, and the necessity of physical settlement of short positions
(which requires the short to deliver eligible gold to a New York
based depositary). Such constraints may explain the evidence noted
by authors such as Gorton and Rouwenhorst (2006) in that commodity
futures returns behave differently to those witnessed in equity
markets.