Is The Oil Market Efficient? : A Cointegration Study of Spot and Futures Prices

Abstract: The oil market is arguably the most influential commodity market in the world, in that it has an effect on all economic variables in one way or another. Due to oil’s central role in the world economy, it is of the utmost importance that all parts of society strive to increase the understanding of how the market works. This study has analysed the efficiency of the oil market in the period 1986 to 2008, with the efficient market hypothesis as the theoretical framework. Data on the prices of spot and futures contracts on crude and heating oil has been collected from the New York Mercantile Exchange, and tested for cointegration, with the underlying assumption being that cointegration is a sign of weak form efficiency. The results implies that the spot and futures prices have not been cointegrated during the studied period, and thus we conclude that the oil market has not behaved in accordance with the weak form of the efficient market hypothesis.