commodities - Is forward price trendless under the real-world measure?

I recently went through some commodities forward curve modeling documentations, where a diffusion model for the forward price $F(t,T)$ was modeled as a driftless diffusion process (as a function of t with T fixed). The document did not mention whether this model is under risk-neutral measure or real-world measure. The model was estimated using historical data assuming trendless. It was later also used for derivative pricing, which is supposedly under the risk neutral measure. For privacy purposes I cannot reveal the source of this document, but just wonder if it is the case that for commodities, these two measures are the same? Is the forward price expected to not change over time even under the real-world measure? If so, what is the argument? Risk premium equal to zero in the commodities world?

Answer

Futures prices are drift less under risk neutral measure. In commodities market, it is often Futures. They need to estimate volatility in their model. Since volatilities are not affected by change of probability, you can estimate under real word measure. So what you describe seems correct.

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To satisfy commentators.

In the continuous time semi martingale framework of Girsanov theorem, a change of probability measure (equivalent) affects only the finite variation part. So of course, if you speak about stochastic volatility models, then the sentence is not completely true. Volatilities have to be understood as diffusion part (the $\sigma_t$ in front of $dW_t$)