Quant BuffetRelax, Not Over Thinking

Sentiment Factor in the Cross-Section of Commodity Futures

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Academic paper

Wisdom of Crowds and Commodity Pricing

AuthorsJohn Hua Fan; Sebastian Binnewies; Sanuri De Silva

Institute
  • Griffith University
  • ?Griffith University - Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics
  • ?Griffith University, Australia
  • ?Griffith University - Griffith Business School

Strategy in a nutshell

The strategy trades 28 commodity futures across six sectors using monthly sentiment extracted from Twitter. Commodities with higher sentiment changes are bought, while those with lower changes are sold, forming an equally-weighted long-short portfolio rebalanced monthly.

Economic rationale

The strategy exploits behavioral biases explained by the appraisal-tendency framework, where emotions from prior events affect traders’ decisions, causing systematic mispricing. Correcting these biases generates a return spread between high and low sentiment-change commodities.

Backtest performance

Annualised return7.26%
Volatility9.6%
Sharpe ratio0.75
Maximum drawdown-12.2%
Win rate71%