Short-term Speculation Research Articles

Larger supply, shorter life? Exploring evidence from alternative cryptocurrencies on decentralized exchanges

Since the advent of Bitcoin, numerous alternative cryptocurrencies have surfaced. Despite their proliferation and increasing popularity, these alternatives often experience brief lifespans, contrasting with Bitcoin's enduring presence. Our analysis of more than 800 alternative cryptocurrencies traded on decentralized exchanges (Dex) has shown that cryptocurrencies with larger supplies generally demonstrate shorter lifespans. The findings remain robust across different definitions of the term “lifespan”. We attribute this trend primarily to short-term speculation, stemming from the absence of intrinsic asset value. These findings hold significant implications for comprehending the risk and investor behavior associated with cryptocurrencies on decentralized exchanges.

Anti-Persistent Values of the Hurst Exponent Anticipate Mean Reversion in Pairs Trading: The Cryptocurrencies Market as a Case Study

Pairs trading is a short-term speculation trading strategy based on matching a long position with a short position in two assets in the hope that their prices will return to their historical equilibrium. In this paper, we focus on identifying opportunities where mean reversion will happen quickly, as the commission costs associated with keeping the positions open for an extended period of time can eliminate excess returns. To this end, we propose the use of the local Hurst exponent as a signal to open trades in the cryptocurrencies market. We conduct a natural experiment to show that the spread of pairs with anti-persistent values of Hurst revert to their mean significantly faster. Next, we verify that this effect is universal across pairs with different levels of co-movement. Finally, we back-test several pairs trading strategies that include H<0.5 as an indicator and check that all of them result in profits. Hence, we conclude that the Hurst exponent represents a meaningful indicator to detect pairs trading opportunities in the cryptocurrencies market.

СТРАТЕГИЯ ИНВЕСТИРОВАНИЯ В ДИВИДЕНДНЫЕ АКЦИИ

The article discusses a dividend investment strategy aimed at generating income in the form of dividends. Unlike buying stocks with high growth potential and short-term speculation, it involves less risk, is not too labor-intensive and, at the same time, can be attractive in terms of profitability. The article gives a new definition for the concept of “dividends” and proposes fundamental approaches to forming a strategy for investing in dividend stocks. It is concluded that investors should pay attention to the dividend policy in order to roughly predict the size of dividends.

Quantile time-frequency spillovers among green bonds, cryptocurrencies, and conventional financial markets

This paper adopts the quantile time-frequency connectedness approach to investigate the dynamic spillovers among green bonds, cryptocurrencies, and conventional financial markets at different frequencies and market conditions. The empirical results show that, firstly, total spillovers are primarily driven by short-term and exhibit a significant increase during periods of economic turmoil. Secondly, the green bond market acts as a net spillover transmitter in the short-term and exerts a powerful net spillover effect on conventional bond and currency markets. However, in the long-term, the green bond market becomes a net spillover receiver, absorbing relatively weaker shocks from other markets. Thirdly, the hedging ability of Bitcoin is time-varying, and an increase in short-term speculation weakens its hedging properties, making it unsuitable as a safe-haven asset. Fourthly, under extreme market conditions, the total spillovers are amplified and display a symmetrical pattern. In this context, the green bond market behaves as an asymmetric net spillover transmitter, while the hedging ability of Bitcoin is further diminished. Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates spillovers across all market conditions, resulting in more pronounced long-term spillovers. These findings hold significant implications for investors seeking to optimize their portfolios and policymakers aiming to safeguard financial stability.

Trauma and investment horizon: Evidence from a representative China equity investor behavior survey

Results from a large sample of individual Chinese investors demonstrate that they were more likely to trade stocks for short-term speculation after experiencing trauma such as natural disasters, serious illness, or death in their immediate family. They exhibited higher impulsivity, a greater desire for immediate gratification, a greater willingness to follow trends, and more risk-taking behaviors as a result of the trauma experience. The data also show that the negative relation between trauma experience and investment horizon is less pronounced for older and married individuals.

What can we learn from the convenience yield of Bitcoin? Evidence from the COVID-19 crisis

In this study, we employ the cost of carrying model to estimate the convenience yields of gold and bitcoin. Using the COVID-19 crisis as a demand shock, we show that the convenience yield of bitcoin decreases, but the convenience yield of gold increases during the pandemic. We further document an inverse relationship between bitcoin user adoption and convenience yield. Such relationship intensifies during the COVID-19 crisis and is mainly driven by the unexpected component of bitcoin's unique active addresses. Our overall findings indicate that gold rather than bitcoin attracts flight-to-safety investors in the pandemic. We provide supporting evidence for the decrease in bitcoin convenience yield, which can be explained by the sudden increase in active trading addresses that short-term speculators own most.

Which is leading: Renewable or brown energy assets?

This study examines the relationship between crude oil, a proxy for brown energy, and several renewable energy stock sector indices (e.g., solar energy, wind energy, bioenergy, and geothermal energy) over various investment horizons. Using daily data from October 15, 2010, to February 23, 2022, we apply a combination of methods involving co-integration, wavelet coherency, and wavelet-based Granger causality. The results show that the relationship between crude oil and renewable energy indices is non-linear and somewhat multifaceted. Firstly, there are sectorial differences in the intensity of the relationships. Notably, the relationship intensity between the wind and crude oil is lower than that involving geothermal energy or bioenergy. Secondly, the relationship evolves with time. For example, the COVID-19 outbreak seems to have increased the relationship between crude oil and renewable energy markets, notably for solar, bioenergy, and geothermal. Thirdly, the relationship varies across scales. When controlling for the VIX (volatility index), a proxy of the sentiment of market participants, and EPU (economic policy uncertainty index), the relationship seems strong in the long term but weak in the short term. This result is confirmed using a Granger causality test on the wavelet-decomposed series. These findings have important implications for long-term investors, short-term speculators, and policymakers regarding the co-movement between brown and renewable energy markets.

Short-Term Speculation Effects on Agricultural Commodity Returns and Volatility in the European Market Prior to and during the Pandemic

Motivated by increased agricultural commodity price volatility and surges during the past decade, we investigated whether financial speculation is to blame. The aim of this paper is to build on prior research about to what extent and in which ways financial speculation undermines agricultural commodity prices. In our analysis, we utilized the daily returns on milling wheat, corn, and soybean futures from the Euronext Commodities Paris market (MATIF) as well as the short-term speculation index. To quantify this impact, we apply Granger noncausality tests as well as the GARCH (generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity) technique. We also propose a model using seasonal dummy variables to examine whether financial speculation has a greater impact on price volatility during more volatile months. According to our results, financial speculation, as an external factor, in most cases has no effect or reduces the volatility of the underlying futures prices. The opposite is observed in the corn market, where volatility has risen in the post-2020 period and has been pushed up even more by speculation in April. However, since the influence on other commodities is limited or nonexistent, more emphasis should be focused on speculation in the European corn futures market or its interdependence with energy markets.

Dependence between renewable energy related critical metal futures and producer equity markets across varying market conditions

We study the dependence of renewable energy production-related critical metal futures and producer equity returns, compared to the non-renewable energy (oil and natural gas) and some other globally relevant commodity markets. We find different asymmetric and symmetric dependencies in these commodity markets. The dependence is asymmetric in the most important critical metal markets, i.e., of silver, copper, and platinum. Still, surprisingly, for example, in the oil market, the relationship is symmetric, and no relationship is found in the natural gas market. Furthermore, the oil and agricultural markets have homogenous dependence structures in most market conditions, so the information transmission channels in these markets seem to be highly efficient. Still, the critical metal markets seem inefficient in this respect. The short-term speculation effects from the precious metals-related stock market segment towards critical metals futures markets are strong compared to others. We suggest that the future regulation of the precious metals producer stock market sector should be tighter to reduce speculative spillovers from this market segment to the futures markets of these metals.

Differences in Investment Concepts between Chinese and Western Investors from the Cultural Perspective

The investment concept, reflecting the investor's investment purpose and willingness, is a value that embodies the investor's investment personality characteristics, prompts investors to carry out investment analysis, judgment, decision-making, and guides investor behaviors. Due to different maturity of the capital market in China and Western countries, there are many differences in the regulatory level, cultural and behavioral patterns of the supervision and management departments of the capital market between Chinese and Western investment philosophy. This article analyzes the differences in investment ideas between Chinese and Western investors from the culture perspective. This thesis studies on the basis of four cultural differences: "The Golden Mean" and "Interest Maximization"; the face-culture and individualism; rule of man and rule of law; and gambler psychology and adventure spirit. Based on these four aspects of cultural differences, four different investment concepts of Chinese and Western investors are analyzed: long-term investments and short-term speculation; "Herd Effect" and independent decision; grapevines and public information; and leveraged trading and allocation of funds. This thesis adopts several cases to analyze the differences between Chinese and Western investors in financial products such as stocks, gold, and futures, and in investment behavior such as the long-term investment, short-term speculation, leveraged trading, and investment portfolios. With cultural differences between China and the West probed into, the differences between Chinese and Western investors' investment concepts are justified. It is hoped that this effort will help investors deepen the understanding of the capital markets in China and the West, enable Chinese investors to learn the Western mature investment concepts, and facilitate the regulators to manage the capital market effectively.

Pairs trading in cryptocurrency market: A long-short story

Pairs trading that is built on ’Relative-Value Arbitrage Rule’ is a popular short-term speculation strategy enabling traders to make profits from temporary mispricing of close substitutes. This paper aims at investigating the profit potentials of pairs trading in a new finance area – on cryptocurrencies market. The empirical design builds upon four well-known approaches to implement pairs trading, namely: correlation analysis, distance approach, stochastic return differential approach, and cointegration analysis, that use monthly closing prices of leading cryptocoins over the period January 1, 2018, – December 31, 2019. Additionally, the paper executes a simulation exercise that compares long-short strategy with long-only portfolio strategy in terms of payoffs and risks. The study finds an inverse relationship between the correlation coefficient and distance between different pairs of cryptocurrencies, which is a prerequisite to determine the potentially market-neutral profits through pairs trading. In addition, pairs trading simulations produce quite substantive evidence on the continuing profitability of pairs trading. In other words, long-short portfolio strategies, producing positive cumulative returns in most subsample periods, consistently outperform conservative long-only portfolio strategies in the cryptocurrency market. The profitability of pairs trading thus adds empirical challenge to the market efficiency of the cryptocurrency market. However, other aspects like spectral correlations and implied volatility might also be significant in determining the profit potentials of pairs trading.

Extrapolation and house price overreaction: Evidence from local jurisdiction mergers

• House price overreacts to positive policy shock during the boom period. • No overreaction of house prices after a similar policy shock during the bust period. • Home purchasers’ expectations of future price change are based on lagged price growth. • Short-term speculators may be the main contributor to the housing price overreaction.

Overvalued Equity and Investment: A Regression Discontinuity Approach

This paper exploits a regulatory experiment that lifts the margin trading ban in China to examine the real effects of speculative retail investors. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that margin trading eligibility causes an increase in share turnover and stock prices, and that marginable firms cater to investor short-termism by manipulating earnings and reducing long-term investment. Consistent with managerial myopia, marginable firms experience a decline in operating profit and equity valuation in the long run. My results suggest that margin traders, as short-term speculators, pressure the manager to focus on current earnings and sacrifice long-term growth.

Extrapolation and House Price Overreaction: Evidence from Local Jurisdiction Mergers

This paper uses two similar local jurisdiction merger policies at different phases of a housing cycle to examine whether home purchasers form their expectations of future house prices based on lagged price changes. Using a detailed housing transaction data set, we find that, during the boom period, the relative home prices in the merged area increased significantly for a few months after a positive fundamental shock and then reverted. However, during the bust period, we find no overreaction of the relative house prices in the local merged districts after a similar shock. Moreover, we find that short-term speculators may be the main contributor to the housing price overreaction. Overall, our results confirm the role of over-extrapolation in house price dynamics.

News-Driven Expectations and Volatility Clustering

Financial volatility obeys two fascinating empirical regularities that apply to various assets, on various markets, and on various time scales: it is fat-tailed (more precisely power-law distributed) and it tends to be clustered in time. Many interesting models have been proposed to account for these regularities, notably agent-based models, which mimic the two empirical laws through a complex mix of nonlinear mechanisms such as traders switching between trading strategies in highly nonlinear way. This paper explains the two regularities simply in terms of traders’ attitudes towards news, an explanation that follows from the very traditional dichotomy of financial market participants, investors versus speculators, whose behaviors are reduced to their simplest forms. Long-run investors’ valuations of an asset are assumed to follow a news-driven random walk, thus capturing the investors’ persistent, long memory of fundamental news. Short-term speculators’ anticipated returns, on the other hand, are assumed to follow a news-driven autoregressive process, capturing their shorter memory of fundamental news, and, by the same token, the feedback intrinsic to the short-sighted, trend-following (or herding) mindset of speculators. These simple, linear models of traders’ expectations explain the two financial regularities in a generic and robust way. Rational expectations, the dominant model of traders’ expectations, is not assumed here, owing to the famous no-speculation, no-trade results.

THE SHORT-TERM AND LONG-TERM TRADE-OFF BETWEEN RISK AND RETURN: CHAOS VS RATIONALITY

This paper used the composite construction method proposed by Haugen (1999) and its application by Zhao and Wang (2010) for the Chinese stock market. Utilizing the Shanghai A-share market stocks data, this paper first selected the shares listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange during January 1, 1997 to December 31, 2017. A portfolio was then built according to the mean variance model of portfolio structure, and simulation results were analysed using the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. The relationship between risk and return in the long and short term was explored. Results indicated no significant relationship between the risk and return of the stock portfolio in the short run, which reflects the complexity of the Chinese stock market. However, in the long run, the risk and return of the stock portfolios are positively correlated, which means that high returns are accompanied by high risks, indicating that the stock market will eventually return to rationality. In other words, the A-share stock market will eventually return to be value-driven and the short-term speculators would be outweighed by long-term value investors.

Speculative and hedging interaction model in oil and U.S. dollar markets—Long-term investor dynamics and phases

We develop the rational dynamics for the long-term investor among boundedly rational speculators in the Carfì–Musolino speculative and hedging model. Numerical evidence is given that indicates there are various phases determined by the degree of nonrational behavior of speculators. The dynamics are shown to be influenced by speculator “noise”. This model has two types of operators: a real economic subject (Air, a long-term trader) and one or more investment banks (Bank, short-term speculators). It also has two markets: oil spot market and U.S. dollar futures. Bank agents react to Air and equilibrate much more quickly than Air, thus we consider rational, best-local-response dynamics for Air based on averaged values of equilibrated Bank variables. The averaged Bank variables are effectively parameters for Air dynamics that depend on deviations-from-rationality (temperature) and Air investment (external field). At zero field, below a critical temperature, there is a phase transition in the speculator system which creates two equilibriums for bank variables, hence in this regime the parameters for the dynamics of the long-term investor Air can undergo a rapid change, which is exactly what happens in the study of quenched dynamics for physical systems. It is also shown that large changes in strategy by the long-term Air investor are always preceded by diverging spatial volatility of Bank speculators. The phases resemble those for unemployment in the “Mark 0” macroeconomic model.

Market Uncertainty, Information Complexity, and Feasible Regulation: An Outside View of Inside Study of Financial Market

The view from inside improves our understanding on market failure and regulation failure in financial market. The EMH fails to understand the causes of financial bubbles and crashes. Behavioral finance introduces insight from psychology. The heuristic and biases approach studied behavioral asymmetry in static environment that leads to market irrationality and information distortion. The fast and frugal thinking in decision-making further explore more complex situation under changing environment. They argue that soft-paternalistic regulation is needed under information overload. The most critical issue is information uncertainty and complexity. Lacking information in frequency domain is the main barrier in managing business cycles. Data form inside reveals current limitations of financial data mainly in the short-term price changes. Microstructure studies show that pricing process is shaped by trading rules. Quantitative analysis reveals severe instability in high frequency trading and derivative market. Feasible regulation should aim to encourage new technology and sustainable growth, rather than protect obsolete technology and short-term speculation. The most fundamental challenge to sustainable economic order is the excessive size of the derivative markets that crowding out investment in real economy. This is a more severe issue than the climate change.

Efficiency and Forecast Performance of Commodity Futures Markets

The present study empirically investigates market efficiency and the potential factors of inefficiency in the main non-energy commodity futures markets: maize, soybeans and wheat. With efficient markets, futures prices can be used as commodity price forecasts, with inefficient markets futures prices are not able to predict spot prices. Technically, exploring the drivers of inefficiency means to assess the determinants of forecast errors, i.e. the factors affecting the difference between realized spot prices and predicted future spot prices. The analysis is carried out using first a traditional test of efficiency for spot and futures prices and then implementing a more sophisticated GARCH analysis at a daily and weekly frequency. The results show that maize, soybeans and wheat markets are not informationally efficient. The realized price volatility of futures markets, the time to maturity, open interest, trading volumes and speculative measures are significant factors explaining forecast errors. In particular, short-term speculation (scalping activity) increases the noise in the information formation process. Similarly, price volatility, lack of liquidity and long contract maturity horizon raise forecast errors, while long-term speculation and speculative pressure reduce errors. The analysis suggests that knowing the causes of forecast errors, would allow to control for such factors and therefore to ameliorate the forecast accuracy of commodity prices.

The Impact of Interest Rate Changes on the Islamic Foreign Exchange Forward in the Malaysian Derivative Market

Islamic foreign exchange forward plays a significant role to mitigate various foreign currency exchange risks. The main challenge that impedes the development and operation of the Islamic foreign exchange forward as a hedging instrument is the behavior of relying on existing conventional framework with core conception of relying on interest rate and excessive risk taking. This study utilized monthly data from April 2004 to October 2017 of the Malaysian derivatives market. This study found that in the absence of an alternative profit-rate related benchmark and cross border activities, Islamic banks are constrained to use the interest rate benchmark. In the short run, both medium term (6-months) and longer term (12-months) tenures indicate faster speed of adjustment possibility due to higher trading volume and less demand for the medium term for the Islamic foreign exchange forward contract. It implies a need of the Islamic foreign exchange forward as a longer-term hedging instrument and not for a short term speculation and risk-taking purposes, as prohibited by shariah.