"Open interest, or the amount of contracts outstanding in futures markets, has remarkable power to forecast commodity, currency, bond, and stock prices. Changes in open interest are highly pro-cyclical and predict asset-price fluctuations better than a number of alternative variables including...

Diversity of opinions among investors plays a crucial role in models of financial market speculation and bubbles. Yet, little is known about the origins of investor disagreement. Using unique data from China, we identify an important cultural and linguistic factor. We show that investors living...