Commodities

Technological advances in laboratory-grown diamonds (LGDs) have eroded the scarcity premium of natural diamonds, raising the question of whether diamonds still function as a safe haven. At the same time, crystalline osmium has become investable for the first time, as crystallization technology enables safe storage, certification, and global trading. Using monthly data from 2017–2025, we form diversified portfolios with and without diamonds and with and without osmium, as well as two-asset combinations with the MSCI World. The results show that diamonds no longer provide reliable stability, while osmium consistently contributes to reducing volatility. For portfolio investors, the key lesson is that traditional safe-haven roles can change; diamonds no longer offer robust protection, whereas crystalline osmium acts as a stabilizing component. These findings illustrate the contrasting effects of technological change: substitution and loss of value for diamonds, usability and stabilization for osmium.

We analyze extreme gold price movements between 1975 and 2025 using Extreme Value Theory (EVT). Using both the Block-Maxima and Peaks-over-Threshold approaches on a daily return basis, we estimate Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) for the entire distribution focusing on a long-term view. Our results demonstrate that models based on the standard normal distribution systematically underestimate extreme risks, whereas EVT provides more reliable measures. In particular, EVT captures not only rare losses, but also sudden positive rallies, highlighting gold’s dual function as a risk and opportunity asset. Asymmetries emerge in the analysis: at the 0.99 quantile, losses appear larger in absolute value than gains. At the 0.995 quantile, in some episodes, upside extremes dominate. Furthermore, we find that geopolitical and economic shocks, including the oil crises, the 2008 financial crisis, and the COVD-19 pandemic, leave distinct signatures in the extremes. By covering five decades, our study provides the most extensive EVT-based assessment of gold risks to date. Our findings contribute to debates on financial stability and provide practical guidance for investors seeking to manage tail risks while recognizing gold’s potential as both a safe haven and a speculative asset.

The global push for electrification and decarbonization has sharply increased demand for critical raw materials—especially lithium and copper—heightening financial and strategic pressures on firms that lead these supply chains. Yet, the systemic financial risks arising from inter-firm interdependencies in this sector remain largely unexplored. This article presents a novel distance-based network framework to analyze systemic risk among the world’s top 15 lithium and copper producers (2020–2024). Firms are represented through standardized vectors of profitability and risk indicators (liquidity–solvency), from which we construct a two-layer similarity network using Euclidean distances. Graph-theoretic tools—including Minimum Spanning Tree, eigenvector centrality, modularity detection, and contagion simulations—reveal the structural properties and transmission pathways of financial shocks. The results show a robust-yet-fragile topology: while stable under minor perturbations, the network is highly vulnerable to failures of central firms. These findings highlight the utility of distance-based network models in uncovering hidden fragilities in critical commodity sectors, offering actionable insights for macroprudential regulators, investors, and corporate risk managers amid growing geopolitical and financial entanglement.