In 1997 the Chicago Mercantile Exchange replaced its live hog futures contract with a cash settlement mechanism based on a Lean Hog Index. Although cash settlement was expected to increase the use of the contract as a hedging tool, producers and packers are concerned that convergence between...

The lean hog futures contract is replacing the live hog futures contract at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange beginning with the February 1997 contract. The lean hog futures will be cash settled based on a broad-based lean hog price index, eliminating terminal markets from the price discovery...

The focus of this study is the habitual speculator in commodity futures markets. The speculator's activity broadens a market, creates essential liquidity, and performs an irreplaceable pricing function. Working knowledge of the profiles and motivations of habitual speculators is essential to...

The objective of this study is to investigate how professional traders in futures and options markets behave under risk and uncertainty. Our preliminary findings suggest that most traders exhibit concave utility functions for gains and convex utility functions for losses, while their weighting...

The purpose of this paper is to determine the importance of the strength and weakness of basis and futures prices as barometers for producers to use in deciding whether to store or not. Basis is the single most important market signal for wheat producers to use when deciding whether to store or...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the accuracy of outlook forecasts relative to futures prices in hog and cattle markets. Published forecasts from four prominent livestock outlook programs are available for analysis. Most of the series begin in the mid- to...

It has been argued that access to captive supply cattle improve the economic efficiency of beef packing facilities. However, this argument has not been subject to hypothesis testing. This work models the cost efficiencies associated with captive supplies or cattle we refer to as being sourced...

Information on typical differences in prices and price risk (as measured by the variances of prices) across marketing arrangements aids fed cattle producers in making choices about methods to use for selling fed cattle to beef packers. This information is also useful for policy discussions on...

Carcass data from more than 38,000 cattle was used to compare the called and measured yield grade in two different periods: before and after the slaughter plant incorporated another grader in the line to improve grading accuracy. The study shows that the graders accuracy significantly increased....