I spent many years on the floor of the Board trading ags. Rice was a legacy CBOT contract that is now technically a CME product due to CME's acquisition of the CBOT. Rice is a contract that no one should ever want to trade though like all low OI markets (think cheese, milk. lumber etc) there was always ONE guy you knew was killing it and he was holding the deck. when a market is that illiquid you are at the mercy of the commercials and trust me that's not a good place to be. I remember in the late 90s cheese was traded at the CME on a chalkboard for like an hour once a week (best as I can remember) and Kraft came in one time and intentionally ran every single guy over. the next time cheese traded instead of seeing the seven or eight guys there was the ONE guy. problem is there's nowhere to get out when you are wrong and that's no way to trade. trade the china exchanges? you might as well play roulette. just curious what is attractive to you about rice futures?
Thank you for the insight (which is genuine, unlike some others who are fantasy trading). Honestly I wanted to look at the usda last report impact and found out its not tradeable. I just thought - half a world eats rice. Where do they trade it
you're welcome maxima120. curiosity with respect to trading opportunities is a good thing. to your point about half the world eating rice but where is it traded says a lot about just how opaque the worlds food supply is. the distribution, storage and processing of the world's grain supply is controlled by just a few companies (ABCD) yet relatively little is known about their operations as commercials are notoriously tight lipped.
Good for them but if there is no fair market with futures and proper exchange then indeed I should stay away.. But (just first thought that came) if I were abcd I'd install a guy on cbot who'd be gaming the market my way, since I control physical delivery and double my profits with "controlled speculation" on the futures.. So perhaps that one you described was just the guy