The Impacts On The Thermal Coal Spot Market By The Launching Of Thermal Coal Futures

As one of the most important energy resources in the world, coal has both the consumption characteristic and the financial characteristic. As China has been on the way of the revolution of coal market, the launching coal futures is the most important and last step. Thermal coal future is an innovative financial product for China’s future market and after one and half a year of the launching of the thermal coal future, the impact on the thermal coal spot market is very important for the development of thermal coal market in the future.This article talks about the impact by the launching of thermal coal future on the thermal coal spot market with two aspects, one is from the view of co integration of spot and future market, the other one is from the point of the difference between the co integration of the thermal coal markets of different countries before and after the launching of the thermal coal futures. The main methods which are used in this article are classic methods like co integration test, causality test, VEC model, variance decomposition and so on. As well as the most recently developed method are used like the calculation of spillover index. From the empirical study of the co integration of the spot and future market, conclusions are made as 1) there is co integration relationship between the China’s thermal coal spot and future market; 2) No matter the spot or the future market, the ecm term will adjust the deviation from the equilibrium; 3) from the Granger causality test, the price discovery function of the future market would be proved and affected by the lags of the series; 4) there are no significant relationship between the conduction of the information by the value of the spillover indexes.From the comparison of the difference of the co integration between China and other three countries spot thermal coal price before and after the launching of thermal coal future5) compare the P value of the Granger causality test, the co integration of the thermal coal market between closer can be proved; 6) the changes in spillover indexes can prove the co movement of the thermal coal markets from different countries. The thermal coal future market has the function of price discovery and improves the process of marketization. However the significance of the empirical study are not good, advices are provided to perfect the thermal coal market from both the spot market and the future market.