The futures-implied petroleum cracking spread is examined for overreaction and subsequent mean reversion via a mechanical trading rule: when the implied margin is greater (less) than estimated refining costs a short (long) spread position is entered. The trading rule results in statistically...

Annual rebalancing of the S&P GSCI index provides a novel and strong identification to estimate the shape of supply curves for commodity futures contracts. Using the 24 commodities included in the S&P GSCI for 2004–2017, we show that cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) reach a peak of 59 basis...

Several studies employ mapping algorithms to infer index positions in WTI crude oil futures from positions in agricultural futures and report an economically large and statistically significant impact of index positions on crude oil futures prices. In this article, we provide direct evidence...

This paper revisits the “adequacy of speculation” debate in agricultural futures markets using the positions held by index funds in the Commitment of Traders reports. Index fund positions were a relatively stable percentage of total open interest from 2006-2008. Traditional speculative...

The noise trader sentiment model of De Long, Shleifer, Summers, and Waldmann (1990a) is applied to futures markets. The theoretical results predict that overly optimistic (pessimistic) noise traders result in market prices that are greater (less) than fundamental value. Thus, returns can be...

Theoretical noise trader models suggest that uninformed traders can impact market prices. However, these models' conclusions depend crucially on the assumed specification for noise trader demand. This research seeks to empirically determine the appropriate demand specification for uninformed...