# Influencing Factors Analysis of Crude Oil Futures Price Volatility Based on Mixed-Frequency Data
## 6 Conclusions  
Crude oil is the most important energy product in the world and one of the major bulk commodities in the international market. It has a very close relationship with the economic and social development of all countries in the world and has attracted the attention and participation of many capitals. Given the impact of two oil shocks in the 1970s, led by OPEC who controls the pricing power on the economies of the developed countries in the West, in order to reduce the international crude oil spot price fluctuations, the United States and Britain in 1983 and in 1988 launched the WTI crude oil futures trading and the north sea Brent crude oil futures trading, hoped to ensure their goals of crude oil price security, and to grasp the international crude oil pricing power again through two basic functions of the futures market price discovery and hedging. In this way, the price of crude oil futures is not only affected by traditional factors, but also closely related to financial factors, resulting in frequent price fluctuations and very complex patterns, which has become a widespread concern for the government, academia and industry. In this paper, a GARCH-MIDAS-Skewed-t model based on mixed data was constructed, and the effects and differences of each single factor, multiple factors, and their combinations on the volatility of Brent crude oil futures were examined. (1) The crude oil futures series and the high-frequency explanatory variable series do not follow a normal distribution and have \"spikes and thick tails\" and the phenomenon of bias. Therefore, this paper combines the skewed-t distribution and the GARCH-MIDAS model to construct a new GARCH-MIDAS-Skewed-t model. Empirical results show that, compared with the GARCH-MIDAS model of the normal distribution, the GARCH-MIDAS-Skewed-t model can better describe the volatility of the Brent crude oil futures return series. (2) Regarding single-factor level effects, among the low-frequency factors, in addition to coal spot prices and speculative factors, crude oil production, consumption, inventory, and natural gas prices are the main factors that have a major impact on the fluctuation of Brent crude oil futures prices after the financial crisis. Although coal is also one of the important substitutes for petroleum, the substitution effect of coal on crude oil requires certain conditions. When the price of coal gradually increases, its advantage of replacing crude oil will not exist. In addition, from a long-term perspective, speculation factors are not the main factor in the price fluctuation of crude oil futures. Regarding the level effect of high-frequency factors, the trading volume in the high-frequency factors on the market and the spot prices in the off-market high-frequency factors have a significant explanatory effect on the price volatility of the Brent crude oil futures market. As trading volume reflects market liquidity and trading activity, and spot prices are the basis of futures prices. therefore, from a short-term perspective, trading volume and spot prices have more important impacts on price fluctuation in the crude oil futures market. This is consistent with the analysis result of the existing theory. (3) Regarding single-factor volatility effects, among the low-frequency factors, the volatility of all low-frequency factors is positively correlated with the volatility of Brent crude oil futures returns, but the effects of coal and natural gas spot price models are not statistically significant. The volatility of crude oil inventories, crude oil consumption, crude oil production, substitute prices, and speculative factors will increase the volatility of the Brent crude oil futures market. From a long-term perspective, relatively speaking, the impact of substitutes is not sufficiently obvious, indicating that the main factor affecting the volatility of Brent crude oil futures is its own demand and supply.