Forecasting Commodity Prices Futures Versus Judgment

This paper assesses the performance of three types of commodity price forecasts—those based on judgment, those relying exclusively on historical price data, and those incorporating prices implied by commodity futures. For most of the 15 commodities in the sample, spot and futures prices appear to be...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Husain, Aasim
Other Authors: Bowman, Chakriya
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C. International Monetary Fund 2004
Series:IMF Working Papers
Subjects:
Oil
Online Access:
Collection: International Monetary Fund - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
Description
Summary:This paper assesses the performance of three types of commodity price forecasts—those based on judgment, those relying exclusively on historical price data, and those incorporating prices implied by commodity futures. For most of the 15 commodities in the sample, spot and futures prices appear to be nonstationary and to form a cointegrating relation. Spot prices tend to move toward futures prices over the long run, and error-correction models exploiting this feature produce more accurate forecasts. The analysis indicates that on the basis of statistical- and directional-accuracy measures, futures-based models yield better forecasts than historical-data-based models or judgment, especially at longer horizons
Physical Description:28 pages
ISBN:9781451846133