We employ data over 2005-2009 which uniquely identify categories of traders to test whether speculators like hedge funds and swap dealers cause price changes or volatility. We find little evidence that speculators destabilize financial markets. To the contrary, speculative trading activity...

The possibility that speculative trading destabilizes or creates a volatile market is frequently debated. To test the hypothesis that speculative trading is destabilizing we employ a unique dataset from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on individual positions of speculators....

Since the Fall of 2008, the benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil has periodically traded at unheard-of discounts to the corresponding Brent benchmark. This discount is not reflected in the price spreads between Brent and other benchmarks that are directly comparable to WTI. Drawing...

Some of the world's largest futures exchanges impose daily limits on the price movements of individual contracts. Using data from three of the most active US commodity futures contracts, we show that these price restrictions are largely ineffective because traders are able to take similar...