This paper revisits the "adequacy of speculation" debate in agricultural futures markets using the positions held by index funds in the Commitment of Traders reports. Index fund positions were a relatively stable percentage of total open interest from 2006--2010. Traditional speculative measures...

Investments into commodity-linked products have grown considerably in recent years. Unlike investments in equities, commodity futures markets produce no earnings; the source of returns is thus unclear. This paper examines returns to static long-only U.S. commodity futures investments over five...

Some market participants and policy-makers believe that index fund investment was a major driver of the 2007-2008 spike in commodity futures prices. One group of empirical studies does find evidence that commodity index investment had an impact on the level of futures prices. However, the data...