“Fast money” around Federal Statistics Releases Huang, Joshua; Serra, Teresa; Garcia, Philip
American journal of agricultural economics,
August 2023, Letnik:
105, Številka:
4
Journal Article
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Many public statistics are closely followed by the public as they provide valuable information for decision making. Although economic theory suggests that low‐latency traders (LLTs) can earn excess ...arbitrage profits from trading on public statistics releases due to their speed advantage, the empirical literature fails to find meaningful LLTs' stock market profits when trading on macroeconomic statistical releases. Here we confirm previous findings with improved techniques, but also show that excess profits can be earned quickly in agricultural commodity futures markets around United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) statistical releases. We attribute differences in the magnitude of the profits to the straightforward nature of the information and to the direct relevance of the reports to traders for the markets considered. Motivated by market concerns, USDA and the United States Department of Labor recently changed their news media prerelease lockup policy to mitigate LLTs' speed advantage. However, we find the policy change had little effect on the speed advantage as no significant reduction in LLTs' profits occurred. Implications of the research are relevant for government agencies concerned with mitigating LLT speed advantages particularly during the release of public statistical information.
We use daily prices from individual futures contracts to test whether speculative bubbles exist in 12 agricultural markets and to identify whether patterns of bubble behavior exist over time. The ...samples begin as far back as 1970 and run through 2011. The findings demonstrate that all 12 agricultural markets experienced multiple periods of price explosiveness. However, bubble episodes represent a very small portion—between 1.5 and 2%—of price behavior during the 42-year period. In addition, most bubbles are short-lived with 80–90% lasting fewer than 10 days. Though receiving far less attention, negative bubbles contribute significantly to price behavior, accounting for more than one-third of explosive episodes. Markets over-react during both positive and negative explosive episodes, leading to a correction as they return to a random walk. This adjustment back to fundamental values is most pronounced with positive bubbles particularly in the earlier part of the sample. While the magnitudes of the corrections are generally small, there were a few instances of significant increases in prices and large over-reactions, most notably in the softs (e.g., cocoa 1973, coffee 1994, cotton 2010). We also find that explosive periods did not become more common or last longer in the second half of the sample period and that the most recent bubble episodes may not have been as severe as in mid-1970s.
Some previous researchers have argued that trading strategies based on calendar spread time series momentum (STSM) can deliver significant returns (Szymanowska et al. 2014; Boons and Prado 2019), ...which, if true, is at odds with the efficient market hypothesis. These arguments however, do not exclude the unrealisable futures contract roll yield and are also affected by other empirical and statistical issues that may lead to misleading results. With more than 30 years of data, we investigate STSM in 22 US commodity futures markets. First, we assess whether past spread returns can predict future returns, a necessary condition for the existence of momentum. We find predictability to be very weak after correcting for the issues affecting prior research. Second, we implement STSM‐based investment strategies. We compare STSM profits for individual markets and portfolios to profits generated by a simple long‐only benchmark strategy that does not require any predictability. STSM does not generate returns statistically different from the benchmark trading strategy, with both strategies generating very low or negative returns. For the momentum to outperform the benchmark strategy, predictability should be three times larger than observed from real data, but would entail substantial downside risk. In sum, the empirical evidence indicates that returns from STSM‐type strategies are illusive for the commodities and period studied. Our results strongly suggest that inclusion of unrealisable roll yield generates the illusion of profitable STSM trading strategies in previous research.
Abstract
Using quantile regression, we evaluate the forecasting performance of futures prices in the soybean complex. The procedure provides a more complete picture of the distribution of forecasts ...than mainstream methods that only focus on central tendency measures. Forecast performance differs by location in the futures price distribution. Futures forecast perform well in the centre of the distribution. However, futures prices tend to over-forecast when futures prices are high and under-forecast when futures prices are low, suggesting that futures prices tend to under-estimate price reversion towards the centre of the distribution. Forecast errors are larger when futures prices are high. The findings are related to theories in the literature used to explain pricing bias, and their implications for market participants are discussed.
A recently developed testing procedure is used to detect and date-stamp explosive episodes ("bubbles") in corn, soybean, and wheat futures markets during 2004–2013. We find that the markets ...experienced price explosiveness only approximately two percent of the time and, when bubbles do occur, they are generally short-lived and small in magnitude. The correspondence between observed price spikes and bubbles is rather low, with a large portion of the price explosiveness occurring during downward price movements. Commodity index trader positions do not significantly affect the probability of a positive bubble occurring in grain futures markets, which directly contradicts the argument (the "Masters Hypothesis") that waves of index investment distorted underlying supply-and-demand relationships and led to a series of massive bubbles in agricultural futures markets. In addition, commodity index trader positions tend to reduce negative bubble occurrence, while general speculative activity as measured by Working's T reduces the probability of a positive bubble. There is some evidence that the positions of noncommercial traders have a direct effect on positive bubble occurrence, but the effect declines when accounting for the composition of other traders in the market. Overall, speculation has little effect or negative effects on price explosiveness. Finally, positive bubbles are more likely to occur in the presence of low inventories, strong exports, a weak U.S. dollar, and booming economic growth, whereas negative bubbles are more likely to occur with large inventories, weak exports, and stagnant economic growth.
This article analyzes recent volatility spillovers in the United States from crude oil using futures prices. Crude oil spillovers to both corn and ethanol markets are somewhat similar in timing and ...magnitude, but moderately stronger to the ethanol market. The shares of corn and ethanol price variability directly attributed to volatility in the crude oil market are generally between 10%-20%, but reached nearly 45% during the financial crisis, when world demand for oil changed dramatically. Volatility transmission is also found from the corn to the ethanol market, but not the opposite. The findings provide insights into the extent of volatility linkages among energy and agricultural markets in a period characterized by strong price variability and significant production of corn-based ethanol.
In 2012 USDA began releasing crop reports during trading hours. Prior reports were released during a trading halt, and in the electronic trading platform traders competed in a batch auction for 2 h. ...Compared to the current real‐time release policy, the batch auction reduced speed advantage, lowered market volatility, and improved liquidity around report releases, at the cost of delaying price discovery. The results reported here support the argument that the development of a shorter batch auction could improve on the lengthy price discovery process while maintaining the batch auction's other advantages. These findings are relevant to not only developed countries with well‐established exchanges and public information systems, but to developing countries who have recently launched or are planning to launch futures commodity markets.
Futures Market Failure? Garcia, Philip; Irwin, Scott H.; Smith, Aaron
American journal of agricultural economics,
01/2015, Letnik:
97, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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 2005-2010, calling into ...question the ability of these markets to perform their price discovery and risk management functions. During this period, futures contracts expired up to 35% above the cash grain price. We develop a dynamic rational expectations model of commodity storage that explains how these recent convergence failures were generated by the institutional structure of the delivery system. When delivery occurs on a grain futures contract, the firm on the short side of the market provides a delivery instrument (a warehouse receipt or shipping certificate) to the firm on the long side of the market. The firm taking delivery may hold the delivery instrument indefinitely, providing it pays a daily storage rate. The futures exchange sets the maximum allowable storage rate at a fixed value. We show that non-convergence arises in equilibrium when the market price of physical grain storage exceeds the maximum storage rate on delivery instruments. We call the difference between the price of carrying physical grain and the maximum storage rate the wedge, and demonstrate theoretically and empirically that the magnitude of the non-convergence equals the expected present discounted value of a function of future wedges.
Using literature-based measures and a modified Bayesian method specified here, we estimate liquidity costs and their determinants for the live cattle and hog futures markets. Volume and volatility ...are simultaneously determined and significantly related to the bid-ask spread. Daily volume is negatively related to the spread while volatility and average volume per transaction display positive relationships. Electronic trading has a significant competitive effect on liquidity costs, particularly in the live cattle market. Results are sensitive to the bid-ask spread measure, with our modified Bayesian method providing estimates most consistent with expectations and the competitive structure in these markets.
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