Speculation In Futures Research Articles

Walking memories, future dreams: Exploring design through cartographies, speculation, and AI

This paper summarizes a design practice (“Take the Memory Out for a Future Walk”) conducted with undergraduate students in a park in Barcelona. Through walking, sensory mapping, artificial intelligence exploration, and prototyping, participants explored the interplay between embodied experiences, memory, future speculation, and design intervention. Walking the park fostered sensory engagement, shaping students’ understanding of the site and its history. This informed the development of projects addressing environmental concerns and promoting sustainable practices through reimagined spaces or objects. Students employed AI tools to generate ideas where they envisioned alternative futures and challenged existing norms. This process encouraged non-canonical reflection, urging students to move beyond conformistic approaches while fostering future-oriented critical thinking. The practice yielded valuable insights for design education. Firstly, it showed why the integrating walking and sensory mapping into design processes can challenge space determinism. In addition, it contributed to the potential of speculative design and future studies to foster alternative imagination and address pressing issues like climate change, promoting planetary awareness. Further iterations could benefit from expanding on-site exploration and incorporating material limitations to deepen student engagement with the natural surroundings, community and project sustainability.

‘Because it matters’

AbstractBasic economic logic, which often simplifies assessments and explanations of agricultural policy issues, is vitally important in communicating with policy‐makers. Resources are limited, and there is a premium on getting decisions at least approximately right first time. Examples from southern Africa illustrate the importance of parity pricing, and its links to household food security (Lesotho), price risk, the emergence of an agricultural futures market, and its central role in allocating scarce agricultural resources (South Africa). Insights derived from an appreciation of parity pricing are relevant in other national contexts and also help explain how international grain markets operate. The parity pricing concept provides a framework for sense‐checking complicated debates relating to two issues that have been prominent in recent years; first, whether and to what extent speculation in futures markets has been a driver of agricultural price spikes, and second, how far indirect land use change (ILUC), triggered by the use of agricultural feedstocks to produce renewable energy, is a material issue. These issues are likely to be of heightened importance in the face of climate change. Each emphasises that agricultural economics matters, and that it matters that we get the economics right.

A study on behavior of producers, retailers and speculators in futures and day-ahead markets: A Nash equilibrium model

Uncertainties in different parameters such as the output power of renewable energy sources, available capacity of generators, or the condition of grid lines in the future, face market players with financial risks in the power system. Futures contracts are used in parallel with the day-ahead electricity markets to protect market players against financial risks of undesirable price fluctuations. Supplying a demand by both futures and day-ahead markets leads to mutual impacts between these two markets. In this paper, a Nash equilibrium approach is introduced to model the interactions between the futures and day-ahead markets. The proposed model includes producers, retailers, and speculators as market players, the uncertainty in the output power of wind farms (WFs), the possibility of the financial settlement of contracts, market players' risk preferences, and transmission system limitations. Using this approach, the optimal strategy of market players in futures and day-ahead markets, the effects of transmission system congestion on the Nash equilibrium of the system, and the role of the financial settlement of contracts in dealing with the uncertainty of WFs' output power and transmission lines capacity are discussed. Eventually, the behavior of speculators and their impacts on the gaming of other market players are evaluated. Simulation results highlight the role of the financial delivery feature in the effective utilization of futures contracts and the behavior of market players.

Integrating culture in future speculation: Speculating Chinese wedding futures

Futures and design are intensively collaborating with each other in the field of experiential futures, with critical design as a source of inspiration. Rather than focusing on the imagination and speculation of future technology as most critical design genres do, this paper examines critical design from a cultural perspective and explores approaches through which future as a way of life is speculated. Special attention has been paid on Design for the Speculative Future (DSF), a culture-centred critical design approach that describes future scenarios in design languages. A framework for integrating cultural resources in the future speculation process has been proposed, taking Chinese weddings as an exemplary case study. Two DSF studios were conducted online in a Chinese social-cultural context to formulate and examine this framework. The proposed framework will benefit both design beginners at a practical level to adopt it in the process of speculating futures, and researchers at the intersection of design and futures to examine how critical design links the present and future and has an impact on futures through construction of future scenarios.

Pacific Man – A Future Speculation Developed from Pacific Architectonics

Characterised by flexible joints and renewable use of materials, Pacific Architecture contains an integrated tectonic system that is historically used to construct both buildings and highly efficient watercrafts, enabling civilizations to flourish in Oceania. However, its significant architectural languages are widely dismissed in today’s utilitarian society. Witnessed in museum, cultural faculties and resorts, Pacific Architecture is often perceived as a cultural artefact that lacks of practical application. As a celebration of Pacific Architecture, the paper aims to discover how tectonics and construction systems from the Pacific could be revived, radically developed and utilised to accommodate “Future Pacific Living” in the rapidly changing world. Through a collective of speculative architectural propositions, the paper proposes alternatives to the existing postcolonial built environment while fully embracing future technologies. The first part of the paper is a review of the author’s past project ‘The Lomipeau Speculation’, a macro-scale visionary proposal to conceive of a city formed by Pacific tectonics. The second part, Pacific Men, is a narrative developed from the past project, exploring how Pacific Architecture can re-define humans’ relationship with the Ocean at a micro-scale. The speculation will be presented through architectural drawings with references to ekistic units.

Destabilizing or passive? The impact of commodity index traders on equilibrium prices

We examine the price impact of traders on commodity futures markets. Following the framework of De Long et al. (1990), we empirically identify the existence of positive feedback traders, passive investors, and rational speculators in major global commodity futures markets. Our results show that index trader demand is negatively related to past commodity returns and is positively related to future commodity returns, as De Long et al. (1990) model predicts for passive investors. Furthermore, “non-reportable traders,” who are not obligated to report their positions to the regulators, behave like positive feedback traders, and interact significantly with commodity futures returns as well.

Statistics Show Value in Old‐School Crop Condition Reports

Statistics Show Value in Old‐School Crop Condition Reports

Fits-and-Starts: The Changing Nature of the Material City

How and why does the material city in the late 20th and early 21st century change? This article examines one type of prominent urban change, which is “fits-and-starts” and represents change that is concentrated in space and time and that nonetheless has longer term repercussions with high economic and environmental costs. Through a review of the literature and an illuminating case study in Las Vegas, this article reveals how human perception and decision-making via two interrelated phenomena, future speculation and manufactured obsolescence, drive such change. The case study in Las Vegas is particularly fascinating because as a city of apparent extremes, it not only reveals in clear relief phenomena that are present in the capitalist city but it also offers insights into basic patterns of decision-making that actually shape—or design—the contemporary city. The article concludes with more general insights into the nature of this type of urban change and implications for alternative types of urban practices.

Surroundings: A History of Environments and Environmentalisms

Surroundings: A History of Environments and Environmentalisms

Speculation and informational efficiency in commodity futures markets

We use recent data of the CFTC to re-assess the effects of financial traders on informational efficiency in commodity futures markets. To do so, we focus on excessive volatility as a means to reflect noise in the price discovery process. We show that the role of financial traders on volatility is more complex than often assumed in the literature. Researchers should distinguish between the trading motives of market actors, as well as between increases and decreases in open interest. Several findings stand out. In particular, we find that short-term fluctuations in open interest might primarily be driven by speculators’ demand for liquidity, and that traditional speculators, as identified by the MM category of the CFTC, may be responsible for increasing volatility in several markets.

Gambling on the Monsoon in the Indian Desert

In the desert area of Rajasthan, people have been betting money on when and how much it will rain during the monsoon for centuries. Despite state investment in forecasting technologies in India, rain bettors do not believe official weather data can predict the precise timing, volume, or location of rain. They instead observe the sky and share real-time information via social networks. Ethnographic research on weather prediction has focused on farmers’ expertise and information relevant for agriculture. Rain betting highlights other monsoon patterns in northwest India, especially sudden shifts in cloud direction and speed. It also foregrounds a creativity around weather uncertainties that, like weather derivatives trading, is about pursuit of profit through active ongoing engagement with weather risks. Rain betting, I argue, is a form of vernacular speculation in futures in an area where people are increasingly giving up farming for more profitable work.

The COVID-19 pandemic and speculation in energy, precious metals, and agricultural futures

We report new evidence that speculation in energy and precious metal futures are more prevalent in crisis periods and even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, agricultural futures attract more hedging pressure. Post-GFC patterns mirror the 1980s’ recessions. Using quantile regression on a long-horizon sample we also find that speculative pressure generally coincides with abnormal returns in normal circumstances but not in the current pandemic. Instead, volatility is strongly and often non-linearly associated with speculation across instruments.

Speculation and Abnormal Returns in Energy, Agriculture, and Precious Metals Futures During the COVID-19 Pandemic

We report new evidence that speculation in energy and precious metal futures are more prevalent in crisis periods and even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, agricultural futures attract more hedging pressure. Post-GFC patterns mirror the 1980s’ recessions. Using quantile regression on a long-horizon sample we also find that speculative pressure generally coincides with abnormal returns in normal circumstances but not in the current pandemic. Instead, volatility is strongly and often non-linearly associated with speculation across instruments.

Wavelet-based analysis of guar futures in India: did we kill the golden goose?

PurposeGuar Gum (GG) is used in Shale oil exploration. Excessive price increase in the Guar futures market had a spillover impact on Guar spot prices and affected Guar export from India as Shale oil producers started exploring alternate sources. In this paper, the role of excessive speculation in the futures market, and its adverse impact on the guar-based agri-business ecosystem have been empirically explored.Design/methodology/approachVolatility spillover dynamics between WTI crude oil and Guar futures have been explored using bivariate-Granger Causality, BEKK–GARCH models with Wavelet multi-resolution analysis. The wavelet-based models capture the multi-scale features of mean and volatility spillover to identify the effect of heterogenous investment behavior in the time and frequency domain.FindingsThe results provide evidence that excessive speculation in futures markets increases spot market volatility. The results also suggest that the excess presence of short-term investors can destabilize the futures market.Research limitations/implicationsThe purpose of the commodity futures market is to support price discovery and risk management. However, speculative practices can destabilize these purposes leading to the failure of the business ecosystem.Originality/valueThe novelty of this paper is twofold. First, it explores the economic linkages between the spot and futures market and tests whether the presence of heterogeneous traders affects the economic linkages. Second, it models the impact of short-term speculative investment on the destabilization of the spot market.

The limits of the imaginary: Challenges to intervening in future speculations of memory, data, and algorithms

Over 3 years, researchers, artists, and activists collaborated on eight public engagement experiments in five countries. All focused on building critical consciousness about digital futures. The interventions worked: Once participants broke through the seamlessness of interface surfaces, they immediately thought more critically about how digital platforms actually operate. Yet even as participants reached into these black boxes, they did not imagine alternatives. This article offers a critical theory reading of the theme of inevitability, using the concept of discursive closure, whereby we can see how particular values and (infra)structures are naturalized, neutralized, and legitimated, closing off discussion of alternatives that might counter current hegemonic power. This article highlights the importance of considering iterative formats for speculative interventions, whereby facilitators can focus not only on imagining new or different digital futures, but find creative ways to identify and help overcome the current resignation to the inevitable.

Uang Fiat dan Operasi Pasar Terbuka: Tinjauan Ekonomi Islam

This article aims to discuss monetary policy in Indonesia, namely Open Market Operations (OPT) on Islamic economics perspective. OPT known as the monetary instrument, which most often used to achieve policy objectives. In general, monetary targets aimed to stimulate the economic growth and inflation stabilization. OPT’s policy products included Bank Indonesia Certificates (SBI), Sharia Bank Indonesia Certificates (SBIS), Bank Indonesia Wadiah Certificates (SWBI), Government Securities (SUN), Sukuk, Private Bonds, Rupiah Interventions (IR), and Loan Facilities Bank Indonesia (FASBI) which is traded on the money market; the primary market and the secondary market with an auction system. Currently, All OPT products based on fiat money. The buy and sell system of OPT products uses a discount system and interest rates. Money plays an important role in the economy, so the policy of monetary contraction and expansion of the amount of money circulating in society will affect the velocity of money. With a descriptive analysis, this article analyzes the role of fiat money from the perspective of Islamic economics. This article argues that the three schools of thought in Islamic economics agree that the function of money used as a means of transaction, investment, and precaution. As an exchange style, money unable to be used as a means of future speculation. Thus, the Islamic economy views that underlying of Islamic monetary policy based on the productivity of the real sector and oriented to the welfare of society.

Understanding the boundaries of life

Astrobiology Life on Earth has several universal chemical characteristics, including the presence of a lipid bilayer cell membrane that separates the aqueous cell contents from the environment. If life has evolved on other planets, it may use entirely different chemical components and principles. Polarity-inverted membrane structures composed of acrylonitrile, termed azotosomes, have previously been proposed as possible membrane alternatives under conditions that resemble those found on Saturn's moon Titan. Sandstrom and Rahm now argue, on the basis of molecular dynamics simulations, that azotosomes made of acrylonitrile in methane would be thermodynamically unstable and therefore unable to self-assemble in a manner similar to lipid bilayers. Such modeling efforts may be useful for constraining future speculation about what chemical assemblies are possible in unfamiliar environments. Sci. Adv. 10.1126/sciadv.aax0272 (2020).

Exploring the dynamic effects of financial factors on oil prices based on a TVP-VAR model

The financialization of crude oil has been enhanced since the 2000s, which has built a stronger relationship between oil and other financial assets, and has increased volatility in the crude oil market. In order to investigate the impacts of financial factors on oil prices, we examine the combined effects of the USD, gold, stock market, and speculation in the crude oil futures market on crude oil prices based on monthly data over the period from 1997 to 2016. With the help of the TVP-VAR model, we can identify the time-varying effects of these financial factors on oil prices and can consider these four financial factors simultaneously, which is the primary contribution of this paper. The main findings of our study are as follows. First, the impacts of financial factors on crude oil prices vary over time, and 2008 global financial crisis strengthen the relationship between financial markets and crude oil prices. Second, the USD is the dominant factor affecting oil prices before a crisis but speculation becomes the strongest factor after a crisis, while gold and the S&P 500 index have lesser effects. Our findings provide the evidence for investors to diversify portfolios and manage risk as well as for policymakers to regulate the market.

Price discovery in agricultural commodity markets: Do speculators contribute?

Previous literature on price discovery in commodity markets is mainly focused on the question of whether the spot or the futures market dominates the price discovery process. Little attention, however, has been paid to the question of how the price discovery process is affected by futures speculation. Using different measures for speculation and hedging and a new price discovery metric, the present study analyzes this relationship for various agricultural commodities. On the whole, the results suggest that speculative activity reduces the level of noise in the futures markets under analysis, while increasing their relative contribution to the price discovery process.

The impact of long-short speculators on the volatility of agricultural commodity futures prices

Departing from the lively discussion about the Masters' hypothesis, this paper examines whether increasing activities of long-short speculators in commodity futures markets have a stabilizing or destabilizing impact on price movements. Our analysis covers five agricultural commodities traded in the US market over the period from 2006 to 2017. We conclude that long-short speculators do not destabilize commodity prices. Instead, we find evidence that activities of long-short speculators reduce volatility in the markets under scrutiny.