What is going on with studies on financial speculation? Evidence from a bibliometric analysis

Abstract

In the context of increasing concerns about financial stability, the different forms of speculation and their study are gaining importance. In the last decade, concern has grown in analysing the impact of speculation forms in the extreme events that can occur in financial markets. The most important recent line of study is the development of the speculation scenarios and the possible incorporation of new ones, the strategy of traders and investors is one of the most important dimensions in the spontaneous generation of high risk in speculation that can suffer markets. Therefore, it becomes a necessary task to measure the amount and level of academic work that has been carried out on speculations and the different forms and trends that may have been throughout the years. Therefore, the main objective is to clarify the current state of speculation, carrying out a bibliometric analysis of the diverse topics. 2642 research papers published between 1971 and 2021 have been analyzed based on the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS) results, identifying publications and co-authorship among the most recognized authors, the countries with the highest percentage of scientific production, the most prominent citations, the most influential journals, and the co-occurrence of keywords. In summary, this study explores new lines of investigation through the measurement and observation of the academic articles until date, which objective is highlighting the new relevant speculation situations, such as the short squeeze in ‘meme stocks’, detection of short selling strategies using the High-Frequency trading, extreme volatility in cryptocurrencies and commodity price shocks.