Response to 'Order Flows and Financial Investor Impacts in Commodity Futures Markets'

Abstract

Financial institutions that issue commodity-linked notes hedge their liabilities by buying commodity futures. Henderson, Pearson and Wang (2015) show that these futures trades impact commodity futures prices and interpret this as evidence that uninformed financial flows into the commodity markets impact commodity prices. Ready and Ready (2019) criticize the analysis and conclusions in Henderson, Pearson and Wang (2015) and instead conclude that there is no evidence that the uninformed financial flows of CLN hedging trades impact commodity prices. This note explains why the analysis, criticisms, and conclusions in Ready and Ready (2019) are incorrect.