Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/74817 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
Nota di Lavoro No. 45.2013
Publisher: 
Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), Milano
Abstract: 
This paper evaluates how different types of speculation affect the volatility of commodities’ futures prices. We adopt four indexes of speculation: Working’s T, the market share of non-commercial traders, the percentage of net long speculators over total open interest in future markets, which proxy for long term speculation, and scalping, which proxies for short term speculation. We consider four energy commodities (light sweet crude oil, heating oil, gasoline and natural gas) and seven non-energy commodities (cocoa, coffee, corn, oats, soybean oil, soybeans and wheat) over the period 1986-2010 analyzed at weekly frequency. Using GARCH models we find that speculation significantly affects volatility of returns: short term speculation has a positive and significant impact on volatility, while long term speculation generally has a negative effect. The robustness exercise shows that: i) scalping is positive and significant also at higher and lower data frequencies; ii) results remain unchanged through different model specifications (GARCH-in-mean, EGARCH, and TARCH); iii) results are robust to different specifications of the mean equation.
Subjects: 
Commodities Futures Markets
Speculation
Scalping
Working’s T
Data Frequency
GARCH Models
JEL: 
C32
G13
Q11
Q43
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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