Journal of Financial Markets Vol. 64 2023
Tracking speculative trading
Abstract
Managed futures funds are predominantly trend-followers. By analyzing positioning data, we provide novel evidence for this claim and estimate signals applied by these funds. We write trend-followers aggregate position as a weighted sum of past daily returns and use a generalized ridge regression for regularization and parameter estimation. This procedure prevents overfitting but remains flexible enough to capture various patterns. For the 23 commodities considered, trend-following can explain speculators’ position changes with an average R2 of more than 40%. Finally, we document that producers act as contrarians in a way that closely mirrors the behavior of momentum traders.
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.finmar.2022.100774
- Volume
- 64
- Pages
- 100774
- Language
- en
- Sources
- crossref openalex