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The Adequacy of Speculation in Agricultural Futures Markets:Too Much of a Good Thing?

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Author Info
Sanders, Dwight R.
Irwin, Scott H.
Merrin, Robert P.

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Abstract

Long-only commodity index funds have been blamed by other futures market participants for inflating commodity prices, increasing market volatility, and distorting historical price relationships. Much of this criticism is leveled without any formal empirical support or even cursory data analyses. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission makes available the positions held by index funds and other large traders in their Commitment’s of Traders report. In this research, we make an initial assessment of the size and activity of index funds in traditional agricultural futures markets. The results suggest that after an initial surge from early 2004 through mid-2005, index fund positions have stabilized as a percent of total open interest. Speculative measures—such as Working’s T—suggest that long-only funds may provide a benefit in markets traditionally dominated by short hedging.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by NCCC-134 Conference on Applied Commodity Price Analysis, Forecasting, and Market Risk Management in its series 2008 Conference, April 21-22, 2008, St. Louis, Missouri with number 37615.

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Date of creation: 2008
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Handle: RePEc:ags:nccest:37615

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Keywords: Commitment’s of Traders; index funds; commodity futures markets; Agricultural Finance;

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. De Long, J Bradford & Andrei Shleifer & Lawrence H. Summers & Robert J. Waldmann, 1990. "Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 703-38, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Gary B. Gorton & Fumio Hayashi & K. Geert Rouwenhorst, 2007. "The Fundamentals of Commodity Futures Returns," NBER Working Papers 13249, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Gary Gorton & K. Geert Rouwenhorst, 2004. "Facts and Fantasies about Commodity Futures," NBER Working Papers 10595, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Wright, Brian, 2009. "International grain reserves and other instruments to address volatility in grain markets," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5028, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  2. Frank, Julieta & Garcia, Philip, 2009. "Bid-Ask Spreads, Volume, and Volatility: Evidence from Livestock Markets," 2009 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, 2009, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 49575, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. [Downloadable!]
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This page was last updated on 2009-12-11.

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