First, it was the mineshaft gap. Now, it’s the Cheese Gap. And a dairy trade war is the perfect way to approach the impending threat.
Continue reading
Category Archives: commodities
The Trade Policy Annotated Yield Curve
Down, down, down. 10yr-3mo at 0.86% at 2pm today. See Jim’s post for more on the spread.
Continue reading
How Will Soybean Prices Be Faring in Six Months?
First, look at futures as of today (with the decline looking unabated):
Continue reading
Will Soybean Prices Recover when China Starts Buying American in the Autumn?
Typically, Chinese purchases of American soybeans picks up in the autumn, due to timing of harvests. If this is an important factor in the recovery of US soybean prices, one would expect futures for November delivery of soybeans would reflect that fact. As of today, they don’t.
Continue reading
Thanks, Trump: Wisconsin Cheese and Motorcycle Edition
As a Social Scientist, I Thank Mr. Trump: Trade Policy Edition
One of the key difficulties in measuring effects and attributing causality is the fact that there are typically many confounding factors. That is why social scientists (and financial economists) often resort to event analyses — looking at what happens around a certain event (like an announcement) when little else is happening. Because there is so much going on with the Trump administration, this is not always possible. However, yesterday evening, the White House released a directive to USTR to identify an additional $200 billion worth of taxable Chinese imports. Here is what happened.
Continue reading
Explaining the Soybean Selloff: Ag Conditions, the Dollar, or Tariff Fears?
45 Years of Nominal Soybean Prices
Source:Source: MacroTrends.
Soybean Futures in Free Fall: Front and Back Months
Reader Ed Hanson asks if it makes a difference to look at front month or back month futures in discerning the impact of news on soybean prices. The answer is no.
Below, I present graphs of soybean futures over the past year for contracts expiring in July, August, September, November, and January 2019 (all accessed on 6/15, from ino.com):
Continue reading
On the Eve of Disruption
(Apologies to P.F.S./B.McG) Soybean, hog prices and corn prices dove even before the Section 301 import tax hit list was announced. (Orange dashed line denotes Trump announcing imminent Section 232 tariffs). Why?
