IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/frz/wpaper/wp2013_04.rdf.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Speculative Cotton Pricing in the 1920s. A Nonlinear Tale of Noise Traders and Fundamentalists

Author

Listed:
  • Giulio Cifarelli

    (DISEI, Università degli studi di Firenze)

  • Paolo Paesani

Abstract

The paper investigates the role of speculation in the Liverpool cotton futures market between 1921 and 1929. The analysis is based on historical descriptions of the working of speculation in commodity markets and is related to the tenets of behavioural finance. The model posits the existence of two categories of speculators, noise traders and fundamentalists, who react (differently) to deviations of market prices from their fundamental value. The empirical analysis is based on original data drawn from the online archives of The Times. The empirical findings allow us to conclude that whereas noise traders tend to herd, fundamentalists are more affected by risk aversion and react asymmetrically more to underpricing than to overpricing of the cotton contracts. As expected, the presence of fundamentalists stabilizes the market. Interestingly our results seem to be consistent with the observations of expert witnesses of those markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Giulio Cifarelli & Paolo Paesani, 2013. "Speculative Cotton Pricing in the 1920s. A Nonlinear Tale of Noise Traders and Fundamentalists," Working Papers - Economics wp2013_04.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
    • Handle: RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2013_04.rdf
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.disei.unifi.it/upload/sub/pubblicazioni/repec/pdf/wp04_2013.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    behavioral finance; speculation; historical cotton futures markets;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
    • F33 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions
    • N13 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N23 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:frz:wpaper:wp2013_04.rdf. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Giorgio Ricchiuti (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/defirit.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.