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This study aims to assess the contemporaneous dependence between euro, crude oil and gold returns and their respective implied volatility changes.

The empirical analysis relies on daily data for the period 2015–2022 and the local Gaussian correlation (LGC) approach that is suitable for estimating dependence between two stochastic processes at any point of their joint distribution.

(a) The global correlation coefficients are negative for the euro and crude oil and positive for gold, implying that in the first two markets’ traders are more concerned with sudden price downswings while in the third with sudden upswings. (b) The detailed local analysis, however, shows that traders 2019 attitudes may change with the underlying state of the market and that risk reversals are more likely to occur at the upper extremes of the joint distributions. (c) The pattern of dependence between price returns and implied volatility changes is asymmetric.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first work that uses the highly flexible LGC approach to analyze the link between price returns and implied volatility changes either in stock or in commodities futures markets. The empirical results provide useful insights into traders’ risk attitudes in different market states.

This paper aims to identify and quantify directional predictability between returns and volume in major cryptocurrencies markets.

The empirical analysis relies on the cross-quantilogram approach that allows one to assess the temporal (lag-lead) association between two stationary time series at different parts of their joint distribution. The data are daily prices and trading volumes from four markets (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and Litecoin).

Extreme returns either positive or negative tend to lead high volume levels. Low levels of trading activity have in general no information content about future returns; high levels, however, tend to precede extreme positive returns.

This is the first work that uses the cross-quantilogram approach to assess the temporal association between returns and volume in cryptocurrencies markets. The findings provide new insights about the informational efficiency of these markets and the traders’ strategies.

This paper aims to investigate the contemporaneous link between price volatility and trading volume in the futures markets of energy.

Non-parametric (local linear) regression models and formal statistical tests are used to assess monotonicity, linearity and symmetry. The data are daily price and volumes from five futures markets (West Texas Intermediate, Brent, gasoline, heating oil and natural gas) in the USA.

Trading volume and price volatility have, in all markets, a strong nonlinear relation to each other. There are violations of monotonicity locally but not globally. The qualitative nature of the price shocks may have implications for the trading activity locally.

To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first manuscript that investigates simultaneously and formally all the three important issues (i.e. monotonicity, linearity and asymmetry) for the price volatility–volume relationship using a highly flexible nonparametric approach.

This paper aims to investigate empirically the linkages between stock and commodity futures markets.

It involves the application of a flexible copula approach to weekly total returns from the S&P 500 index and from three commodity sub-indices (agriculture, metals and energy) from 1995 to 2017.

Co-movement is by no means frequent and symmetric. It was predominantly zero before the last financial crisis, and since then, it is positive and asymmetric. The pattern of asymmetry is consistent with transmission of shocks under extreme negative shocks only. Recently, total returns of commodity futures are very poor. At the same time, commodity futures markets move in step (out of step) with stock markets when the latter plunge (rise), pointing to limited diversification benefits. These appear to justify the concerns of investors and researchers whether including commodities in a portfolio of assets is still a prudent investment strategy.

It is the only manuscript that combines a flexible copula approach and co-movement measurement along both the positive and negative diagonals. The findings are in sharp contrast with those reported by Delatte and Lopez (2013) and are very important for portfolio management.

This study aims to investigate the connectivity among four principal implied volatility (“fear”) markets in the USA.

The empirical analysis relies on daily data (“fear gauge indices”) for the period 2017–2023 and the quantile vector autoregressive (QVAR) approach that allows connectivity (that is, the network topology of interrelated markets) to be quantile-dependent and time-varying.

Extreme increases in fear are transmitted with higher intensity relative to extreme decreases in it. The implied volatility markets for gold and for stocks are the main risk connectors in the network and also net transmitters of shocks to the implied volatility markets for crude oil and for the euro-dollar exchange rate. Major events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine increase connectivity; this increase, however, is likely to be more pronounced at the median than the extremes of the joint distribution of the four fear indices.

This is the first work that uses the QVAR approach to implied volatility markets. The empirical results provide useful insights into how fear spreads across stock and commodities markets, something that is important for risk management, option pricing and forecasting.

The purpose of this study is to investigate empirically the pattern of co-movement between prices and implied volatility in the future markets for crude oil.

The tool of non-parametric quantile regression is applied to daily price returns and implied volatility changes from 2007 to 2018.

For the total sample period, the link between price returns and forward-looking volatility expectations is contemporaneous, negative and asymmetric, and it exhibits an (approximately) inverted U-shaped pattern suggesting that: the pricing of implied volatility is heavier for large (in absolute value terms) changes relative to small ones and it is lighter for large positive changes relative to large negative ones. The pattern of co-movement, therefore, appears to be in line with the theoretical postulates of fear, exuberance and loss aversion. The main characteristics of the relationship are present in some (but not in all) sub-periods, which are also considered in this study.

Less than a handful of works have assessed the link between implied volatility and prices for commodity ETFs. This is the first one relying on flexible non-parametric quantile regressions.

The relationship between returns and trading volume is central in financial economics because it has both a theoretical interest and important practical implications with regard to the structure of financial markets and the level of speculation activity. The aim of this study is to provide new insights into the association between returns and trading volume by investigating their kernel (instantaneous) causality. The empirical analysis relies on time series data from 22 commodities futures markets (agricultural, energy and metals) in the USA.

Non-parametric (local linear) regressions are applied to daily data on returns and on trading activity; generalized correlation measures are computed and their differences are subjected to formal statistical testing.

The results suggest that raw returns are likely to kernel-cause volume and volume is likely to kernel-cause price volatility. The patterns of causal order are generally in line with what is stipulated by the relevant theory, they provide guidance for model specification and they appear to explain the empirical evidence on temporal (lag-lead) causality between the same pairs of variables obtained in earlier works.

The concept of kernel causality has very recently become a part of the toolkit for econometric/statistical analysis. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that relies on the notion of kernel (instantaneous) causality to provide new evidence on a relationship that is of keen interest to investors, professional economists and policymakers.