Gold and the Stock Market: 3 Essays on Gold Investments

Taurasi, Donatella (2013) Gold and the Stock Market: 3 Essays on Gold Investments, [Dissertation thesis], Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna. Dottorato di ricerca in Mercati e intermediari finanziari, 24 Ciclo. DOI 10.6092/unibo/amsdottorato/5693.
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Abstract

This thesis gives an overview of the history of gold per se, of gold as an investment good and offers some institutional details about gold and other precious metal markets. The goal of this study is to investigate the role of gold as a store of value and hedge against negative market movements in turbulent times. I investigate gold’s ability to act as a safe haven during periods of financial stress by employing instrumental variable techniques that allow for time varying conditional covariance. I find broad evidence supporting the view that gold acts as an anchor of stability during market downturns. During periods of high uncertainty and low stock market returns, gold tends to have higher than average excess returns. The effectiveness of gold as a safe haven is enhanced during periods of extreme crises: the largest peaks are observed during the global financial crises of 2007-2009 and, in particular, during the Lehman default (October 2008). A further goal of this thesis is to investigate whether gold provides protection from tail risk. I address the issue of asymmetric precious metal behavior conditioned to stock market performance and provide empirical evidence about the contribution of gold to a portfolio’s systematic skewness and kurtosis. I find that gold has positive coskewness with the market portfolio when the market is skewed to the left. Moreover, gold shows low cokurtosis with the market returns during volatile periods. I therefore show that gold is a desirable investment good to risk averse investors, since it tends to decrease the probability of experiencing extreme bad outcomes, and the magnitude of losses in case such events occur. Gold thus bears very important and under-researched characteristics as an asset class per se, which this thesis contributed to address and unveil.

Abstract
Tipologia del documento
Tesi di dottorato
Autore
Taurasi, Donatella
Supervisore
Co-supervisore
Dottorato di ricerca
Scuola di dottorato
Scienze economiche e statistiche
Ciclo
24
Coordinatore
Settore disciplinare
Settore concorsuale
Parole chiave
Gold, conditional covariance, coskewness, cokurtosis, safe haven, market turmoil, risk management, crises
URN:NBN
DOI
10.6092/unibo/amsdottorato/5693
Data di discussione
4 Giugno 2013
URI

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