This article tests the efficiency of the hog options market and assesses the impact of the 1996 contract redesign on efficiency. We find that the hog options market is efficient, but some options yielded excess returns during the live hogs period but not during the lean hogs period. Our findings...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the marketing performance of wheat farmers in Illinois and Kansas over 1982–2004. The results show that farmer benchmark prices for wheat in Illinois and Kansas fall in the middle third of the price range about half to three-quarters of the time....

This article tests the efficiency of the hog options market and assesses the impact of the 1996 contract redesign on efficiency. We find that the hog options market is efficient, but some options yielded excess returns during the live hogs period but not during the lean hogs period. Our findings...

The paper examines empirical returns from holding thirty- and ninety-day call and put positions,and the forecasting performance of implied volatility in the live and feeder cattle optionsmarkets. In both markets, implied volatility is an upwardly biased and inefficient predictor ofrealized...

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...

This paper investigates whether the accuracy of outlook hog price forecasts can be improvedusing composite forecasts in an out-of-sample context. Price forecasts from four wellrecognizedoutlook programs are combined with futures-based forecasts, ARIMA, andunrestricted Vector Autoregressive (VAR)...

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 study investigates empirical methods of generating prediction intervals for WASDE forecasts of corn, soybean, and wheat prices over the 1980/81 through 2006/07 marketing years. Empirical methods use historical forecast errors to estimate forecast error distributions, which are then used to...

The lack of consistently acceptable convergence performance for Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) corn, soybean, and wheat contracts since late 2005 has been widely discussed (e.g., Henriques, 2008).1 Convergence performance is summarized in Figure 1, depicting delivery location basis levels on the...