In a well-functioning futures market, the futures price at expiration equals the price of the underlying asset. This condition failed to hold in grain markets for most of 2005-10. During this period, futures contracts expired up to 35% above the cash grain price. We develop a rational...

Little is known about trading activity in commodity options market. We study the information content of commodity futures and options trading volume. Time-series tests indicate that futures contracts in a portfolio with the lowest option-to-futures volume ratio (O/F) outperform those in a...

Organized exchanges have evolved methods for enforcing contracts, which allow the contracts themselves to be traded at low cost. Theorists have modeled futures contracts as tools for risk management, despite an extensive empirical literature that does not support predictions about bias in prices...

This paper investigates the relationship between futures prices and financial investments in derivatives of the main agricultural commodities. We first provide a broad picture of how these markets function and how they have evolved, showing that traders who deal mostly in commodity index...

Futures funds fool investor's money to speculate in futures market. Due to favorable tax treatment, futures funds are usually organized as limited partnerships within the United States. Typically, an affiliate or subsidiary of a brokerage company acts as general partner. If limited partnership...

Commodity Derivatives Market has a very vital role to play in any economy. The futures contracts perform two important functions i.e., price discovery and price risk management. Price discovery is the general process in determining the spot price. Indian coffee has created a niche market...

Agricultural policy in developing countries is strongly shaped by views about speculation in the foodgrain markets. The central issue is whether speculative expectations are rational. Yet, data availability and the absence of futures markets rarely permits a direct examination of this...

There has been substantial research effort aimed to forecast futures price return volatilities of financial and commodity assets. Some part of this research focuses on the performance of time-series models (in particular ARCH models) versus option implied volatility models. A significant part of...