As implied by WSJ ed board, via Thune, e.g. Mebbe. Sure doesn’t look like it at first glance. On the other hand, through 2018, Trump’s trade policies and associated trade policy uncertainty haven’t helped much…
Category Archives: commodities
Comparing shipping costs and industrial production as measures of world economic activity
That’s the title of my latest contribution at Vox CEPR Policy Portal.
Guess the Expiration Price of July 2019 Soybean Futures
On July 12, 2019, the soybean futures contract (CBOT) for July 2019 expires (first delivery on 7/16). On July 12, 2018, the closing price was 885.75 (data from ino.com here). What’s your guess on what the expiration price will be?
Soybean Watch in the Wake of the Trump-Xi Standstill
On July 12th, 2018, the closing price for a CBOT soybean futures contract expiring on July 12, 2019, was 885.75. As of 1:40PM Central on July 2nd, the price of the July 2019 contract was 877.00, 0.99% difference. In other words, soybean futures are (still) doing pretty well in terms of forecasting.
Figure 1: Price of contract for soybeans futures expiring July 2019 (black line), fifty data moving average (blue line). Source: ino.com accessed 7/2 1:40PM, and author’s annotations.
In other words, despite the Trump-Xi trade truce, soybean prices remain mired at where they were nearly a year ago (which is why I think Brad Setsers’ “standstill” better describes the outcome).
How Well Have Predictions of Trade War Victory Done? Soybean Edition
Here is a graph of the front-month futures (July 2019, expires 12th) for soybeans:
Source: ino.com, accessed 6/26/2019 10AM Pacific.
Winning ™ – Soybeans Front
Keep on saying that we’re winning, and maybe it’ll come true. For the rest of us grounded in reality, soybean prices are falling again, and soybean stocks are rising (and estimates of end FYMY2018/2019 stocks have just been revised upward).
Soybeans: Efficient Markets Hypothesis and All That Jazz
Reader CoRev continues to voice skepticism about the predictive ability of soybean futures. He asks for
proof, with successful predictions, of the validity of…your soybean price model….BTW, we are getting closer to the model’s magic validation date.
A Modest Proposal: “Victory Tofu”
America needs all-tofu school lunches, subsidized tofu pizza, a Tofutti ice-cream substitute campaign… and more. I figure 205.4 pounds of tofu per American should do the trick. The situation facing American soybean farmers is dire, as shown below.
Winning: US Agriculture Edition
Figure 1: Real proprietor farm income with inventory valuation adjustment and capital consumption allowance (dark blue), and 4 quarter trailing moving average (red), both in billions of Ch.2012$, SAAR. Deflated using GDP deflator. Source: BEA 2019Q1 advance release, and author’s calculations.
Of Chinese Swine, US Hog Exports, Soybean Prices, and News
Soybean prices continue to plunge (July ’19 futures). Some have argued that decreased demand for soybeans, due to the ongoing African swine fever epidemic in China. The April 9th USDA FAS report contained information on both this, and soy market conditions. If decreased demand for soybeans was due to news about Chinese swine stocks, we would have expected rising US hog and declining soy prices. Yet hog prices have fallen for most of the time since then.