Speculation has long been thought to have significant economic effects, but it is difficult to measure, making it … challenging to examine these effects empirically. In this paper we measure speculation in the UK since 1785 by using business and … financial reporting in The Times newspaper. Our monthly speculation index reveals four distinct epochs of speculation in the UK …

comprehensive measures of commodity market speculation across five sectors and examine their sector-specific impact on returns … to predict commodity futures returns. The relationship between speculation and commodity returns is bi-directional across …