RE:RE:Crude futures are $41+ for 2016Yup and the research I've been looking into supports your conclusion.
Raw futures prices are found to be unbiased predictors of future oil prices; that is, for the past two decades, the raw oil futures prices are as likely to overpredict as to underpredict future oil prices. However, while the average of forecasting errors based on raw futures prices may be close to zero, such errors are quite large over time. Indeed, raw oil futures prices provide relatively less accurate forecasts than models using both the futures prices and spot price (the “futures-spot spread” model).Therefore, incorporating information on the relationship between current futures prices and spot price improves the forecast.
There is some predictive value in different futures predicitng models but the futures price on it's own is not the most accurate.
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