Speculative Investment Research Articles

Burkert, Mattie. Speculative Enterprise: Public Theaters and Financial Markets in London: 1688–1763

Burkert, Mattie. <i>Speculative Enterprise: Public Theaters and Financial Markets in London: 1688–1763</i>

Is Tether a safe haven of safe haven amid COVID-19? An assessment against Bitcoin and oil using improved measures of risk

Bitcoin is a new speculative investment with extremely volatile movement, thus possibly failing to act as a safe haven for crude oil when the price of this energy commodity plummeted following the global outbreak of COVID-19. Meanwhile, Tether is designed to behave similarly to the US dollar with stable fluctuation. In this study, we assessed their safe-haven properties in terms of risk reduction opportunities by proposing an improved version of Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES). Using vine copula-based AR-GJR-GARCH models, we demonstrated that Bitcoin exhibited inconsistent risk reduction capability for oil, particularly before COVID-19. When adding Tether into a portfolio containing oil and Bitcoin, the risk reduction was achieved for any portfolio allocation and was more pronounced amid the COVID-19 period. This suggests that Tether consistently served strong support for Bitcoin to protect oil investors against extreme risk and received a significant impact from the COVID-19 outbreak. However, the consistent safe-haven functionality of Tether was not as good as that of the US dollar in most cases, and this implied the vanishing of its stability. These results were robust when considering another asymmetric volatility model and another dependence model. Furthermore, the proposed improved VaR and ES forecasts outperformed their corresponding unimproved version in quantifying portfolio risk and therefore provided a more accurate assessment of safe-haven roles.

The seasonality of lottery-like stock returns

Using daily stock returns over 38 years, we extend the mood seasonality hypothesis to examine whether seasonal anomalies are more pronounced in stocks with lottery-like features preferred by individual investors. We find that the strength of various stock return seasonality patterns is significantly associated with stocks’ lottery-likeness. The seasonality patterns of positive January and pre-holiday performance, and negative Monday performance are all enhanced the more lottery-like a stock is. Additional analysis for different prosperity periods indicates support for Prospect Theory. Overall, our results are consistent with investor mood seasonality (and consequential risk-tolerance) being expressed via speculative investments.

Indigenous Philosophies and the "Psychedelic Renaissance"

AbstractThe Western world is experiencing a resurgence of interest in the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, most of which are derived from plants or fungi with a history of Indigenous ceremonial use. Recent research has revealed that psychedelic compounds have the potential to address treatment‐resistant depression and anxiety, as well as post‐traumatic stress disorder and addictions. These findings have contributed to the decriminalization of psychedelics in some jurisdictions and their legalization in others. Despite psychedelics’ opaque legal status, numerous companies and individuals are profiting from speculative investments with few, if any, benefits accruing to Indigenous Peoples. In this paper, we suggest that the aptly named “psychedelic renaissance,” like the European Renaissance, is made possible by colonial extractivism. We further suggest that Indigenous philosophical traditions offer alternative approaches to reorient the “psychedelic renaissance” towards a more equitable future for Indigenous Peoples, psychedelic medicines, and all our relations.

A political ecology of speculative urbanism: The role of financial and environmental speculation in Jakarta’s water crisis

Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, is increasingly characterized by luxury real estate developments and high-profile infrastructural projects made possible by economic liberalization and finance capital. Yet these developments have contributed to Jakarta’s struggles with chronic flooding, land subsidence, and water shortages. This paper contributes an empirical study of the spatial-temporal dynamics of speculative urbanism and the associated impacts on water resources and flood events in Jakarta. I use an urban political ecology approach to analyze mainland and offshore development. First, I show how financial speculation generates flood risk and the overexploitation of water resources, producing uneven socio-spatial distributions of risk. These transformations in Jakarta’s hydroscape in turn threaten to undermine the city’s viability as a site for speculative investment. I thus show how speculative urbanism can be threatened or disrupted by nonhuman agencies. Second, I illustrate a second form of speculation, which I refer to as environmental speculation. As Jakarta’s water crisis has cast doubt on the future of the city itself as a place of habitation, the state explored an ambitious and potentially lucrative coastal defense project, while private developers have engaged in land reclamation. The turn toward offshore development illustrates how environmental speculation creates new opportunities for capital accumulation. I advance two arguments: first, in order to capture the full costs of speculative urbanism, it is imperative that urban scholars attend to its ecological dimensions. Second, an urban political ecology approach advances our understandings of speculative urbanism by illuminating its contradictions and limits.

Affordability Crisis and Gentrification in FDI Export-Led Economies: Prices in the Demanddriven Housing Market of Cluj-Napoca

Abstract This paper examines the rapid increase of prices in the residential sector of Cluj-Napoca in the context of the housing affordability crisis (Wetzstein, 2017). By using insight from the Growth Regimes literature, we look at the internal demand as a main driver of rapid price rise. As Kohl and Spielau (2018) argue, the monetary conditions needed for export-led growth regimes are restricting the outputs of the construction sector, creating under-supplied, demand-driven housing markets. We propose three alternative hypotheses regarding the major agent driving the prices within the city as major source of demand: the employees in knowledge-intensive services, the diffuse regional savings of employees in search for some yields, the specialized real estate investors. We use OLS and spatial regression (lag and error) to model the price per square meter using the social composition of the neighbourhoods, the within and out-of-town origin of investors, and the source of money (bank loans vs. cash payment) to demonstrate that the existing crisis is driven by the middle class’s savings that also benefits from gentrification, while speculative investments in the housing markets are rather limited.

Landscapes of value

This special issue presents a collection of ethnographic and archaeological articles that consider how humans inscribe landscapes with diverse forms of value. From natural resources to real estate markets, from cherished homelands to foreign speculative investment, the way we approach landscapes offers insights into value systems as they map onto and emerge from biophysical terrains. We argue that the “landscapes of value” analytic foregrounds such materiality to embed cyclical value making within particular places and times. We introduce this special issue by discussing the articles' contributions along four overlapping processes of landscape valuation: commodification, exclusion, speculation, and simplification.

Business improvement districts, class turf war and the strategic weaponisation of class monopoly rent

Business improvement districts (BIDs) are understood as a proactive response by locally dependent property owners and businesses aimed at attracting capital investment and consumers back to the central city at a time of increasingly gutted public sector resources. BIDs have yet to be explicitly examined as a form of rent-seeking, even though the primary motivation for property owners to self-impose additional taxes for implementing ‘clean and safe’ programmes is rent. In this context, the self-imposed tax is treated as a speculative investment that will hopefully yield a return in the form of enhanced profit for businesses and rents for landowners. As such, we conceptualise BIDs as not only a form of rent-seeking, but an alliance of private-sector actors engaged in the collaborative and strategic mobilisation of class monopoly rent as a weapon against all perceived barriers to profitability. Based on evidence from Seattle, Washington, the paper deepens our understanding of BIDs by linking this phenomenon to the spatial dynamics of rent within the contemporary neoliberal city and concludes by discussing the implications for what BIDs reveal about class monopoly rent in particular, the kind of class conflict this form of rent configures and its role within wider processes of neoliberal urbanisation.

Anti-Bartlett clauses after IQEQ in the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal

Abstract As a donor of assets over a continuing period via a trustee, the settlor and the trustee are free to negotiate how far an exoneration clause can extend to oust a trustee's duties and so limit the extent of the bounty conferred on beneficiaries by the settlor. In particular, where an aggressive speculative investment policy is required to be pursued via a controlled underlying company, so that beneficiaries may benefit from massive gains or suffer the burden of massive losses, the vulnerable trustee is entitled to protect itself from all liability for losses unless guilty of dishonesty or of failing to intervene in circumstances where it had actual knowledge of dishonesty in the management of the company.

British Travelers to the Mines of Rio de la Plata and Chile in the Aftermath of the Financial Crisis of 1825–26: Political Economy and Questions of Observation

Abstract This article focuses on work published by British travelers to Chile and Rio de la Plata who inspected mining association holdings in the region in the wake of the financial crisis of 1825–26. The travelers sought to determine whether it proved prudent to continue to direct British men, money, know-how, and equipment to the mines. They drew on the work of political economists to help establish the credibility of their observations and accounts, particularly with respect to the relationship between the lack of the division of labor and population in La Plata and Chile and prospects for future speculative investments in the mines. However, while political economists blamed the financial crisis on the uncertainty generated by the actions of the Bank of England and private banks, the commercial travelers focused on other sources of observational and representational error: principal-agent problems in the joint-stock mining associations, and the travelers' ignorance and prejudices about the region.

Lessons from the Nickel Plate Road, 1881 to 1916: A railroad built to be sold

This study examines the operation of the New York, Chicago &amp; St Louis Railroad Company, which is better known by the name, the Nickel Plate Road (NKP). The operations and financial reports from its inception through the period under study provide evidence that management adopted practices that contributed to a populist view of behaviour akin to the robber baron image. This added to social disruption, and the need for anti-trust regulation. Monopolistic tendencies of U.S. large-scale enterprises in the last decades of the nineteenth century motivated speculative investors to build the NKP for selling it to ensure anti-competitive aims of the acquirer. This article, based on the annual accounting reports, asserts that enabling such a structure guided NKP's activities. This demonstrates that laissez-faire business policy alone was failing to meet developing social constructs for an industrial society. Disclosure of accounting numbers became an expectation with the rise of the Interstate Commerce Commission and regulation demonstrating the public use of private interest. Regulating the socio-economic force of railroads and addressing the ‘railroad problem’ would require decades for government officials to effectively address.

Speculative trading preferences of retail investor birth cohorts

AbstractThis study examines the effect of investor birth cohorts on speculative investment preferences. Using retail trading and portfolio data from Finland over two decades, we find that individuals who have experienced desirable macro‐economic and social conditions during adolescence, such as high gross domestic product (GDP) growth and low divorce rates, are more likely to invest in speculative stocks. A positive relation is found between the proportion of speculative‐prone cohorts in the stock market and returns of stocks of lottery nature. We provide new evidence on the adverse effect of speculative investments, finding that cohorts with higher speculative investment weights on their portfolios achieve lower absolute and risk‐adjusted returns. We also provide support for earlier research that identifies a positive association between recent portfolio performance and the propensity to invest in speculative stocks.

Operasional Produk Investasi Emas Pada Pegadaian Syariah Ditinjau Dari Prinsip Ekonomi Islam

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Investment is one of the important instruments as collateral in the future for every human being. Pawnshop institutions are now growing rapidly can be an alternative for customers whowish to invest. The purpose of this study was to determine oprasional Gold Investment in Islamic pawnshop-related goals, mechanisms, customer requirements the applicant, term, collateral, benefits and fees charged to customers in terms of the applicant’s gold investment principles of Islamic economy in the form of fatwas and outlook muamalah fiqh. This study uses field research by visiting the direct object of study to obtain the required files through interviews, observation on operationality of Gold Investment. While the analysis is used to process the data that has been obtained is descriptive analysis to produce results. Results from this study is that Gold Investment to buy mortgage scheme on Islamic Pawnshop or Sharia Pawnshop has not fully correspond to some Fiqh Fatwa and Economic Islam Principles, that the clarity of the goods at the contract, which contains the value of speculative investments.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

Evictions, Foreclosures, and Global Housing Speculation in Palma, Spain

Over the last two decades, the property bubble and the subsequent economic crisis and post-crisis policies have heightened urban inequalities, mainly in cities in southern Europe. The gaps between social classes have widened with the configuration of new urban spaces characterized by segregation and exclusion. Palma is the capital of one of the top tourist destinations in the Mediterranean (the Balearic Islands) and it is usually regarded as a successful tourism model and a land of opportunity for property investors. Nevertheless, serious problems of inequality exist in the city. The centre of this dual city is split between a process of spreading gentrification and the urban blight of its poor neighbourhoods. Son Gotleu is a particular case in point. The neighbourhood is home to a large number of social housing blocks (1960s) with residents from mostly migrant backgrounds. Within a global context of new redefined rent-seeking mechanisms, this article analysed impoverishment in Son Gotleu, based on three variables associated with housing: evictions, foreclosures and the property market. Our study shows that evictions were a determining feature of impoverishment, linked to the emergence of new speculative investment interests. Indeed, investment funds are very probably the most influential urban agents today.

The COVID-19 pandemic, short-sale ban, and market efficiency: empirical evidence from the European equity markets

This study looks at the inefficiency of stock indices of France, Italy, and Spain around their financial regulatory authorities’ short-sale ban during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The empirical analysis of this study provides evidence of price predictability of the basis of futures contract prior to the short-sale restriction. Moreover, the results show a significant underpricing in futures contracts of FTSE MIB and IBEX35 indices while the two months of short-sale banned period. These findings suggest that prohibiting short selling during the market downturn might undermine the stock markets’ efficiency and generate arbitrage opportunities for speculative investors.

Cryptographics

Cryptographics is an artwork that reflects on the recent phenomenon of cryp- to art, which involves associating digital artifacts with blockchain, tokenizing artworks with non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This practice has recently been the subject of heated debate within art and the humanities, as well as setting off a feeding frenzy by artists, digital content creators, and speculative investors. In Cryptographics, I take an artistic interpretation of this topic, highlighting the way that while tokenization is intended to make unique digital assets more eas- ily traceable, it treats content as inconsequential, raising a number of questions regarding the value of digital artworks. Working with found text fragments from discussions centered on NFTs and crypto art and existing images, the work seeks to negate the representational role of images, reducing them to mere fields of pixels. By obscuring the visual content of the images and text, this work ques- tions what impacts it may have if we are to treat all digital content as commod- ifiable, yet interchangeable.

Supply Chain Capitalism in the Planetary Network Blockbuster

Drawing on the scholarship on how infrastructures facilitate the borderless mobility of transnational flows across commodity supply chains in a time of dispersed sovereignty, this essay analyzes spatial depictions of interlinked nodes for finance, extraction, and logistics, which define the operations of a capitalist world system centred in metropolitan areas in the Asia-Pacific region. Looking at the emergent genre of the planetary network blockbuster, which comprises superhero, science-fiction, and spy narratives that transpire across an array of transpacific landscapes in the strenuous effort to confront a global threat, it examines its conventional audiovisual construction of setting based on variances of material progress. Diverging from normative critiques of techno-orientalist portrayals of excessive East Asian wealth, which tend to be concerned with racialized bodies, this essay uncovers how the visualization of global inequalities rests on interreferential urban iconographies that juxtapose the order, prosperity, and dynamism of ‘industrialized’ Northeast Asian capitals Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul, and Hong Kong with the illegality, vulnerability, and squalor of ‘emerging’ Southeast Asian megacities Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila, and Ho Chi Minh City. Focusing on recurrent fragmentary representations from sequels and spinoffs of the Bond, Bourne, Marvel, and Transformers franchises that map intraregional supply chains of monetized biomedical, robotic, and cybernetic technology, it explores how infrastructural imaginaries of skyscrapers, laboratories, mines, factories, powerplants, warehouses, roads, and ports can reorder hierarchies of speculative investment, urban development, scientific innovation, and military security.

Review essay: Between the Material and the Ephemeral

Review essay: Between the Material and the Ephemeral

Non-recourse mortgage law and housing speculation

Borrowers in states with non-recourse mortgage law face limited liability on their mortgage loans. Using a regression discontinuity design at state borders, we show that non-recourse law causes greater increase in housing prices during the U.S. housing boom in the 2000s by encouraging speculative investment demands. Non-recourse states experience greater investment-purpose housing purchases with highly leveraged mortgages during the boom period 2004–2006. We find that the emergence of the originate-to-distribute model enables lenders to effectively shift risk to other investors, thereby promoting excessive loan originations and amplifying the housing price increase in non-recourse states during a boom period.

Gadai dan Investasi Emas: Antara Konsep dan Implementasi

Pawn services, particularly Islamic pawn services in gold (rahn) is one of Islamic banks product that distributes short term financing to consumers without repayment (qardh) in order to mutual assistance principle (tabarru’). Gold pawning services could be an alternative for consumers to get easy money and have a fast process in sharia way. Yet this gold pawning services turn to be speculative investment in practice that contrast with sharia principle and the same time it raises quention on how strong the commitment of all stakeholders to pursue the sharia principle. This study aims to analyze the concept and various problems indication in gold pawning services implementation. Descriptive analytic method is applied to analyze secondary data related to its problems. The result of the study indicate that to ensure the practice of pawning gold does not become speculative motive, it’s necessary to have a clear and binding regulations on how the pawning practice should be carried out. These regulations must also be followed by strict sanctions. In addition, ensuring the gold pawn financing is channeled to the real sector will help prevent the emergence of speculators. On the other hand, the public as customer should be aware of risks on combining product of gold pawn financing and gold investment because big profits in any investment are always followed by high risks. Finally, Participated and strong commitment of all stakeholders are the comprehensive answer in order to pursue maqasid sharia.