Newswire Tone-Overlay Commodity Portfolios

Abstract

This paper introduces the tone-overlay framework for adjusting traditional commodity signals based on the level of salient optimism or pessimism in commodity newswires. By implementing the novel tone-overlay allocation strategy on 26 commodities using traditional allocation signals, we demonstrate that the resulting long-short portfolios yield substantial performance gains compared to the corresponding plain-vanilla traditional portfolios. Our findings suggest that newswire tone provides short-term predictive power for commodity futures returns, beyond well-known commodity characteristics. The tone-overlay portfolios harness a temporary mispricing that reflects an overreaction of commodity futures prices to commodity-specific newswire tone. The outperformance of the tone overlay strengthens with the salience of the newswire tone, consistent with theories of limited investor attention.

Keywords: Textual analysis, Sentiment, Commodity futures, Tactical allocation, Mispricing, Newswire tone-overlay portfolio, Salience

JEL Classification: Q02, G12, G14.