Dependence between renewable energy related critical metal futures and producer equity markets across varying market conditions

Abstract

We study the dependence of renewable energy production-related critical metal futures and producer equity returns, compared to the non-renewable energy (oil and natural gas) and some other globally relevant commodity markets. We find different asymmetric and symmetric dependencies in these commodity markets. The dependence is asymmetric in the most important critical metal markets, i.e., of silver, copper, and platinum. Still, surprisingly, for example, in the oil market, the relationship is symmetric, and no relationship is found in the natural gas market. Furthermore, the oil and agricultural markets have homogenous dependence structures in most market conditions, so the information transmission channels in these markets seem to be highly efficient. Still, the critical metal markets seem inefficient in this respect. The short-term speculation effects from the precious metals-related stock market segment towards critical metals futures markets are strong compared to others. We suggest that the future regulation of the precious metals producer stock market sector should be tighter to reduce speculative spillovers from this market segment to the futures markets of these metals.