Cross-correlations between price and volume in Chinese gold markets

• We investigate the cross-correlations of price and volume in Chinese gold markets.
• Qualitative analysis and quantitative MF-DCCA method are used in this research.
• We examine the sources of multifractal features between price and volume.
• We investigate the time-varying features between price and volume.

We apply the multifractal detrended cross-correlation analysis (MF-DCCA) method to investigate the cross-correlation behaviors between price and volume in Chinese gold spot and futures markets. Qualitatively, we find that the price and volume series are significantly cross-correlated using the cross-correlation test statistics Qcc(m)Qcc(m) and the ρDCCAρDCCA coefficients. Quantitatively, by employing the MF-DCCA analysis, we find that there is a power-law cross-correlation and significant multifractal features between price and volume in gold spot and futures markets. Furthermore, by comparing the multifractality of the original series to the shuffled and surrogated series, we find that, for the gold spot market, the main contribution of multifractality is fat-tail distribution; for the gold futures market, both long-range correlations and fat-tail distributions play important roles in the contribution of multifractality. Finally, by employing the method of rolling windows, we undertake further investigation into the time-varying features of the cross-correlations between price and volume. We find that for both spot and futures markets, the cross-correlations are anti-persistent in general. In the short term, the cross-correlation shows obvious fluctuations due to exogenous shocks while, in the long term, the relationship tends to be at a metastable level due to the dynamic mechanism.