IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/cudawp/127901.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Commodity Futures Prices As Forecasts

Author

Listed:
  • Tomek, William G.

Abstract

Futures markets provide contemporaneous price quotations for a constellation of contracts, with maturities 30 or more months in the future, and a large literature exists about interpreting these prices as forecasts. It is often preferable to think of futures markets as determining a price level and price differences appropriate to the temporal definitions of the contracts. Futures prices can be efficient in reflecting a complex set of factors, but still be "poor" forecasters. Forecasts from quantitative models cannot improve upon efficient futures prices as forecasting agents; the models provide equally poor forecasts. Analogous ideas are discussed for basis forecasts.

Suggested Citation

  • Tomek, William G., 1996. "Commodity Futures Prices As Forecasts," Working Papers 127901, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:cudawp:127901
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.127901
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/127901/files/Cornell_Dyson_wp9607.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.127901?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert J. Hauser & Philip Garcia & Alan D. Tumblin, 1990. "Basis Expectations and Soybean Hedging Effectiveness," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 12(1), pages 125-136.
    2. Eugene F. Fama & Kenneth R. French, 2015. "Commodity Futures Prices: Some Evidence on Forecast Power, Premiums, and the Theory of Storage," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Anastasios G Malliaris & William T Ziemba (ed.), THE WORLD SCIENTIFIC HANDBOOK OF FUTURES MARKETS, chapter 4, pages 79-102, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Richard G. Heifner, 1966. "The Gains from Basing Grain Storage Decisions on Cash-Future Spreads," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 48(5), pages 1490-1495.
    4. Emmett Elam & Bruce L. Dixon, 1988. "Examining the validity of a test of futures market efficiency," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(3), pages 365-372, June.
    5. Grossman, Sanford J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1980. "On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 393-408, June.
    6. Avraham Kamara, 1982. "Issues in futures markets: A survey," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 2(3), pages 261-294, September.
    7. Richard E. Just & Gordon C. Rausser, 1981. "Commodity Price Forecasting with Large-Scale Econometric Models and the Futures Market," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 63(2), pages 197-208.
    8. Fama, Eugene F, 1970. "Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 25(2), pages 383-417, May.
    9. Rausser, Gordon C & Carter, Colin, 1983. "Futures Market Efficiency in the Soybean Complex," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 65(3), pages 469-478, August.
    10. Blank, Steven C., 1989. "Research On Futures Markets: Issues, Approaches, And Empirical Findings," Western Journal of Agricultural Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 14(1), pages 1-14, July.
    11. Lester G. Telser, 1958. "Futures Trading and the Storage of Cotton and Wheat," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(3), pages 233-233.
    12. French, Kenneth R, 1986. "Detecting Spot Price Forecasts in Futures Prices," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(2), pages 39-54, April.
    13. William G. Tomek & Roger W. Gray, 1970. "Temporal Relationships Among Prices on Commodity Futures Markets: Their Allocative and Stabilizing Roles," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 52(3), pages 372-380.
    14. Kahl, Kandice H. & Tomek, William G., 1986. "Forward-Pricing Models for Futures Markets: Some Statistical and Interpretative Issues," Food Research Institute Studies, Stanford University, Food Research Institute, vol. 20(1), pages 1-16.
    15. Bessler, David A. & Brandt, Jon A., 1992. "An analysis of forecasts of livestock prices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 249-263, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Paroissien, Emmanuel, 2020. "Forecasting bulk prices of Bordeaux wines using leading indicators," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 292-309.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Skold, Karl Durwood, 1989. "The integration of alternative information systems: an application to the Hogs and Pigs report," ISU General Staff Papers 1989010108000010239, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    2. Andrew McKenzie & Matthew Holt, 2002. "Market efficiency in agricultural futures markets," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(12), pages 1519-1532.
    3. Gordon, J. Douglas, 1985. "The Distribution of Daily Changes in Commodity Futures Prices," Technical Bulletins 156817, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    4. Tomek, William G. & Peterson, Hikaru Hanawa, 2000. "Risk Management in Agricultural Markets: A Survey," Staff Papers 121140, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    5. Funk, Samuel M. & Zook, James E. & Featherstone, Allen M., 2008. "Chicago Board of Trade Ethanol Contract Efficiency," 2008 Annual Meeting, February 2-6, 2008, Dallas, Texas 6811, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    6. Saleuddin, Rasheed & Coffman, D’Maris, 2018. "Can inflation expectations be measured using commodity futures prices?," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 37-48.
    7. Rausser, Gordon C & Carter, Colin, 1983. "Futures Market Efficiency in the Soybean Complex," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 65(3), pages 469-478, August.
    8. Carl R. Zulauf & Scott H. Irwin, 1998. "Market Efficiency and Marketing to Enhance Income of Crop Producers," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 20(2), pages 308-331.
    9. Scott, Ayesha & Schoen, Tilman & Fernandez-Perez, Adrian, 2020. "The Predictive Power of NZX Dairy Futures," 2020 Conference (64th), February 12-14, 2020, Perth, Western Australia 305230, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    10. Kastens, Terry L. & Schroeder, Ted C., 1996. "Efficiency Tests Of July Kansas City Wheat Futures," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 21(2), pages 1-12, December.
    11. Garcia, Philip & Hudson, Michael A. & Waller, Mark L., 1988. "The Pricing Efficiency of Agricultural Futures Markets: An Analysis of Previous Research Results," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 119-130, July.
    12. Sanders, Dwight R. & Garcia, Philip & Manfredo, Mark R., 2008. "Information Content in Deferred Futures Prices: Live Cattle and Hogs," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 33(1), pages 1-12, April.
    13. Matthew T. Holt & Andrew M. McKenzie, 2003. "Quasi-rational and ex ante price expectations in commodity supply models: an empirical analysis of the US broiler market," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(4), pages 407-426.
    14. George Daskalakis, Lazaros Symeonidis, Raphael N. Markellos, 2015. "Electricity futures prices in an emissions constrained economy: Evidence from European power markets," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3).
    15. Haugom, Erik & Ullrich, Carl J., 2012. "Market efficiency and risk premia in short-term forward prices," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 1931-1941.
    16. repec:ags:vtaesp:232463 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Longstaff, Francis & Wang, Ashley, 2002. "Electricity Forward Prices: A High-Frequency Empirical Analysis," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt7mh2m2bt, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    18. Stepanek, Christian & Walter, Matthias & Rathgeber, Andreas, 2013. "Is the convenience yield a good indicator of a commodity's supply risk?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 395-405.
    19. Rammerstorfer, Margarethe & Eisl, Roland, 2011. "Carbon capture and storage—Investment strategies for the future?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(11), pages 7103-7111.
    20. Sabuhoro, Jean Bosco & Larue, Bruno, 1997. "The market efficiency hypothesis: The case of coffee and cocoa futures," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 16(3), pages 171-184, August.
    21. Stronzik, Marcus & Rammerstorfer, Margarethe & Neumann, Anne, 2009. "Does the European natural gas market pass the competitive benchmark of the theory of storage? Indirect tests for three major trading points," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 5432-5439, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Marketing;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:cudawp:127901. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dacorus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.