Agricultural commodity derivatives in India: A study of mentha oil futures Athma Prashanta, Professor, Rao K. P. Venugopala, Research Scholar Department of Commerce, Osmania University, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India Online published on 9 August, 2013. Abstract Financial Market facilitates business firms as well as Government to raise needed funds by issuing and selling different instruments. Investor always makes investment in expectation of return. However, return is always subject to the risk attached. There has been a quest for finding out suitable hedging mechanism. Derivatives provide an effective solution to the problem of risk caused by uncertainty and volatility in the underlying asset. The Government of India after several favorable recommendations by expert committees had introduced the National Commodity Derivatives Market for a better risk management mechanism for the Agricultural and Non Agricultural commodities traded in the country. The objectives of the study are to analyze the co-movement of the Futures and Spot Prices of Mentha Oil and assess the leadership between the Futures and the Spot Markets in Mentha Oil. The data are based on Secondary sources which include the various websites viz., www.fmc.gov.in; www.mcxindia.com; www.ncdex.com; www.fia.org. The Hypothesis are framed that Futures does not Granger Cause Spot Prices and Spot price does not Granger Cause Futures. The tools and techniques employed for the analysis of the data are 3 day moving average; Cross Correlation Function; Augmented Dickey-Fuller test Statistic; Multiple Regression; Johansen Cointegration Approach; Vector Error Correction and Granger Causality Test. The Average of Spot price is greater than the Futures price indicating a backwardation. The role of the Spot price is dominant between the two price series though insignificantly. The overall behavior of the Markets is in perfect correlation with efficient price formation due to high CCF at zero lag. The effect of Spot on Futures price is more compared to the effect of Future on Spot prices. Top Keywords Commodity Derivatives, Lead-Lag effect, Vector Error Correction, Granger Causality. Top |