IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aen/journl/2011v32-02-a07.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Speculators Drive Crude Oil Futures Prices?

Author

Listed:
  • Bahattin Buyuksahin
  • Jeffrey H. Harris

Abstract

The coincident rise in crude oil prices and increased number of financial participants in the crude oil futures market from 2000-2008 has led to allegations that "speculators" drive crude oil prices. As crude oil futures peaked at $147/ bbl in July 2008, the role of speculators came under heated debate. In this paper, we employ unique data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to test the relation between crude oil prices and the trading positions of various types of traders in the crude oil futures market. We employ Granger Causality tests to analyze lead and lag relations between price and position data at daily and multiple day intervals. We find little evidence that hedge funds and other non-commercial (speculator) position changes Granger-cause price changes; the results instead suggest that price changes precede their position changes.

Suggested Citation

  • Bahattin Buyuksahin & Jeffrey H. Harris, 2011. "Do Speculators Drive Crude Oil Futures Prices?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2), pages 167-202.
    • Handle: RePEc:aen:journl:2011v32-02-a07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejarticle.aspx?id=2421
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to IAEE members and subscribers. bers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. De Long, J Bradford, et al, 1990. "Positive Feedback Investment Strategies and Destabilizing Rational Speculation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(2), pages 379-395, June.
    2. Ron Alquist & Lutz Kilian, 2010. "What do we learn from the price of crude oil futures?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(4), pages 539-573.
    3. Sanders, Dwight R. & Boris, Keith & Manfredo, Mark, 2004. "Hedgers, funds, and small speculators in the energy futures markets: an analysis of the CFTC's Commitments of Traders reports," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 425-445, May.
    4. Shleifer, Andrei & Summers, Lawrence H, 1990. "The Noise Trader Approach to Finance," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 19-33, Spring.
    5. James L. Smith, 2009. "World Oil: Market or Mayhem?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(3), pages 145-164, Summer.
    6. Lutz Kilian & Bruce Hicks, 2013. "Did Unexpectedly Strong Economic Growth Cause the Oil Price Shock of 2003–2008?," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(5), pages 385-394, August.
    7. Lutz Kilian & Daniel P. Murphy, 2014. "The Role Of Inventories And Speculative Trading In The Global Market For Crude Oil," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(3), pages 454-478, April.
    8. Peck, Anne E., 1982. "Estimation of Hedging and Speculative Positions in Futures Markets Revisited," Food Research Institute Studies, Stanford University, Food Research Institute, vol. 18(2), pages 1-16.
    9. Lutz Kilian, 2009. "Not All Oil Price Shocks Are Alike: Disentangling Demand and Supply Shocks in the Crude Oil Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 1053-1069, June.
    10. Paul Davidson, 2008. "Crude Oil Prices:," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(4), pages 110-118.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ron Alquist and Olivier Gervais, 2013. "The Role of Financial Speculation in Driving the Price of Crude Oil," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3).
    2. Gong, Xu & Chen, Liqiang & Lin, Boqiang, 2020. "Analyzing dynamic impacts of different oil shocks on oil price," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    3. Haase, Marco & Seiler Zimmermann, Yvonne & Zimmermann, Heinz, 2016. "The impact of speculation on commodity futures markets – A review of the findings of 100 empirical studies," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 1-15.
    4. Sung Je Byun, 2017. "Speculation in Commodity Futures Markets, Inventories and the Price of Crude Oil," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 5).
    5. Joëts, Marc & Mignon, Valérie & Razafindrabe, Tovonony, 2017. "Does the volatility of commodity prices reflect macroeconomic uncertainty?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 313-326.
    6. Miao, Hong & Ramchander, Sanjay & Wang, Tianyang & Yang, Dongxiao, 2017. "Influential factors in crude oil price forecasting," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 77-88.
    7. Christiane Baumeister & Lutz Kilian, 2011. "Real-Time Forecasts of the Real Price of Oil," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(2), pages 326-336, September.
    8. Morana, Claudio, 2013. "Oil price dynamics, macro-finance interactions and the role of financial speculation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 206-226.
    9. Degiannakis, Stavros & Filis, George, 2018. "Forecasting oil prices: High-frequency financial data are indeed useful," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 388-402.
    10. Lutz Kilian & Xiaoqing Zhou, 2023. "The Econometrics of Oil Market VAR Models," Advances in Econometrics, in: Essays in Honor of Joon Y. Park: Econometric Methodology in Empirical Applications, volume 45, pages 65-95, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    11. Luciana Juvenal & Ivan Petrella, 2015. "Speculation in the Oil Market," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(4), pages 621-649, June.
    12. Valenti, Daniele & Bastianin, Andrea & Manera, Matteo, 2023. "A weekly structural VAR model of the US crude oil market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    13. Koch, Nicolas, 2014. "Tail events: A new approach to understanding extreme energy commodity prices," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 195-205.
    14. Ratti, Ronald A. & Vespignani, Joaquin L., 2013. "Liquidity and crude oil prices: China's influence over 1996–2011," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 517-525.
    15. Jin, Xin, 2019. "The role of market expectations in commodity price dynamics: Evidence from oil data," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 1-18.
    16. Jamie L. Cross & Bao H. Nguyen & Trung Duc Tran, 2022. "The role of precautionary and speculative demand in the global market for crude oil," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(5), pages 882-895, August.
    17. Yannick Le Pen & Benoît Sévi, 2013. "Futures Trading and the Excess Comovement of Commodity Prices," Working Papers halshs-00793724, HAL.
    18. Filippo Lechthaler & Lisa Leinert, 2012. "Moody Oil - What is Driving the Crude Oil Price?," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 12/168, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    19. Panopoulou, Ekaterini & Pantelidis, Theologos, 2015. "Speculative behaviour and oil price predictability," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 128-136.
    20. Kim, Myung Suk, 2018. "Impacts of supply and demand factors on declining oil prices," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 1059-1065.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F0 - International Economics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aen:journl:2011v32-02-a07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: David Williams (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaeeeea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.