Many believe that index fund investment was the main driver of the 2007-2008 spike in commodity futures prices. One group of empirical studies finds evidence that commodity index investment directly or indirectly had a substantial impact on commodity futures prices. However, the data and methods...

The objective of this report is to re-visit the quot;adequacy speculation quot; debate in agricultural futures markets. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission makes available the positions held by index funds and other large traders in their Commitment of Traders reports. The results suggest...

Basis behavior can have a direct affect on hedging and pricing decisions. Here, ex ante basis risk for selected live hog cash markets is analyzed from 1985 through 1994. One and five month ahead econometric, time series, and naive forecasts are used to construct measures of basis risk based on...