Economists and others need estimates of future cash price volatility to use in risk management evaluation and education programs. This paper evaluates the performance of alternative volatility forecasts for fed cattle, feeder cattle, and corn cash price returns. Forecasts include time series...

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....

Recent accusations against speculators in general and long-only commodity index funds inparticular, include: increasing market volatility, distorting historical price relationships, andfueling a rapid increase and decrease in commodity inflation. Some researchers have argued thatthese market...

It is commonly asserted that speculative buying by index funds in commodity futures andover–the–counter derivatives markets created a ‘‘bubble’’ in commodity prices, with the resultthat prices, and crude oil prices, in particular, far exceeded fundamental values at the peak.The...

This is a comprehensive study of the growth and impact of agricultural futures market traders. The growth of financial investment in commodities has introduced participants and raised both new questions and warranted revisiting old questions; these include the impact on commodity prices, the...

Cointegration analysis is used to study the spot and futures price relationships for two storable commodities, corn and soybeans, and a nonstorable commodity, live hogs, over a 13-year period, 1980 to 1992. For corn and soybeans, cointegration is found in most pre-harvest contracts (July), and...

Firms always encounter risks in the process of production, distribution and marketing due to the structure of the firms, market conditions, or some unforeseen circumstances such as natural catastrophe. Instruments have been developed to help firms deal with such risks, and futures contracts are...

This study identifies the changes that have occurred in the world cocoa market, explains these changes and deduces implications for development policy. Supply of cocoa to the world market has increased and the world price of cocoa is decreasing. Cocoa is an important export commodity for...

In this research, the noise trader sentiment model of De Long, Schleifer, Summers, and Waldmann is modified and applied to futures markets. The theoretical model predicts that overly optimistic (pessimistic) noise traders result in futures prices that are greater (less) than fundamental value....

In developing optimal hedge ratios for the soybean processing margin, many authors have illustrated the importance of considering the interactions between the cash and futures prices for soybeans, soybean oil, and soybean meal. Conditional as well as time-varying hedge ratios have been examined,...