Price overreactions in the commodity futures market: An intraday analysis of the Covid-19 pandemic impact

The objective of this paper is to examine the overreaction behavior of 20 commodity futures based on intraday data from November 20, 2019 to June 3, 2020 with a focus on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. A dynamic and non-parametric approach is applied on intraday data for four different frequencies (from 1 min to 1 h) and two different sub-periods (pre-Covid-19 pandemic and during Covid-19 pandemic) in order to detect overreaction behavior which is defined as a large change of prices followed by proportional price reversals. Our empirical findings show that the overreaction hypothesis is confirmed for the considered commodity futures. Furthermore, both the number and the amplitude of overreactions is higher during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our findings also indicate that soft and metal commodities show much less overreactions than precious metals and especially energy commodities. In particular, crude oil futures exhibit a different overreaction behavior compared to other commodities since it has a higher number of negative than positive overreactions during the Covid-19 pandemic. We also find that the data frequency is independent of the overreacting behavior in both periods as the results continuously improve when having more observations due to higher frequencies. Finally, we find that extreme overreactions during the Covid-19 pandemic provide a great potential for profitable trading returns, which can be exploited by traders. •The twenty considered commodities experience intraday price overreaction behavior.•The price overreactions are higher during the Covid-19 pandemic.•There are significant differences between soft and hard commodities.•Crude oil is a special commodity with a different price overreaction behavior.•Trading strategies based on extreme overreactions are profitable.