Resilience of grain storage markets to upheaval in futures markets

Abstract

There has been an increase in the volume of long-only index funds in commodity markets as well as a time period where cash and futures markets did not converge. What is the economic impact of these events on storage markets? To answer this question the supply of storage is estimated before, during and after the rapid growth and the lack of convergence. An econometric model is used to estimate the supply of storage. Descriptive statistics are used to determine storage returns on Kansas City hard red winter wheat (KC HRWW), soybeans and corn across time periods. Empirical results suggest that markets were able to adapt to the influx of index fund trading as well as the concomitant lack of convergence. There is no strong relationship between the index funds investment and storage markets. Overall, the research indicates the resilience of storage markets to structural change.