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...

Considerable research effort has focused on the forecasting of asset return volatility. Debate in this area centers around the performance of time series models, in particular GARCH, relative to implied volatility from observed option premiums. Existing literature suggests that the performance...

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...