Against the backdrop of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union (BREXIT), this study examines predictability in the stock markets of sixteen European countries, the United States, and the BRICS (Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa) by analyzing how their returns predict the returns of sixteen commodities at different quantile levels. The study builds upon existing literature on predictability and extends it by investigating the impact of the BREXIT crisis on these markets. The findings suggest that investors can hedge their portfolios with various commodities during times of the BREXIT crisis, but caution is advised, and the trend of both equities and commodities should be closely monitored before making investment decisions.

The objective of this study is to create optimal two-asset portfolios consisting of stocks from Western Europe, the United States, and the BRICS (Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa), as well as sixteen commodity types during the BREXIT period. We utilized dynamic variances and covariances from the GARCH model to derive weights for the two-asset portfolios, with each portfolio consisting of one equity factor and one commodity factor. Subsequently, hedge ratios were calculated for these various assets. Our findings indicate that portfolios consisting of European stocks do not require the inclusion of commodities, whereas the other equities do.

Climate change has become mankind’s main challenge. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from shipping are not irresponsible for this, representing 3% of the global total; an amount equal to that of Germany’s emissions. The Fourth Greenhouse Gas Study 2020 of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) predicts that the proportion of GHG emissions from shipping will rise further, as global trade continues to recover and grow, along with the economic development of India, China and Africa. China and the European Union have proposed to include shipping in their carbon emissions trading systems (ETS). As a result, the study of the relationship between the carbon finance market and the shipping industry, attempted here for the first time, is particularly important both for policymakers and shipowners. We use wavelet analysis and the spillover index methods to explore the dynamic dependence and information spillovers between the carbon finance market and shipping. We discover a long-term dependence and information linkages between the two markets, with the carbon finance market being the dominant one. Major events, such as the 2009 global financial crisis; Brexit in 2016; the 2018 China-US trade frictions; and COVID-19 are shown to strengthen the dependence of carbon finance and shipping. We find that the dependence is strongest between the EU carbon finance market and dry bulk shipping, while the link is weaker in the case of tanker shipping. Nonetheless, carbon finance and tanker shipping showed a relatively stronger dependence when OPEC refused to cut production in 2014, and when the China-US trade dispute led to the collapse of oil prices after 2018. We show that information spillovers between carbon finance and shipping are bidirectional and asymmetric. The carbon finance market is the principal transmitter of information. Our results and their interpretation provide guidance to governments on whether (and how) to include shipping in emissions trading schemes, supporting at the same time the environmental sustainability decisions of shipping companies.