The CME thread reminded me of something I stumbled across a couple months ago and forgot to post about.
Some new ETF’s have hit the market recently that might enable us small guys to actually hedge some of our costs, including cheese, flour and meat.
Teucrium Corn Fund - This fund is designed to track the price of corn, which can be somewhat correlated to the price of cheese (corn is a major input cost). Take a look at the graph and it has been mainly running with cheese, even giving back in the past few days (when cheese prices finally fell.)
Teucrium is also planning a fund that tracks the price of wheat.
UBS E-TRACS CMCI Livestock ETN - Tracks the price of cattle and lean hogs. I buy raw pork, so this would be a great one for me but it could also hedge all of your pork related meat products.
If somebody purchased the appropriate amount of CORN six months ago you could have been mostly hedged against the cheese price run-up. We are not nearly big enough to negotiate long term contract with suppliers to hedge commodity prices, but these funds could allow at least some control.
Disclaimer - I haven’t done a full amount of research on these yet, I don’t know how good the correlation is, I don’t know what the management costs are, I haven’t done the financial engineering to determine the proper amounts to purchase to hedge. Don’t buy these on my recommendation! I just think they’re an interesting possibility.
Some new ETF’s have hit the market recently that might enable us small guys to actually hedge some of our costs, including cheese, flour and meat.
Teucrium Corn Fund - This fund is designed to track the price of corn, which can be somewhat correlated to the price of cheese (corn is a major input cost). Take a look at the graph and it has been mainly running with cheese, even giving back in the past few days (when cheese prices finally fell.)
Teucrium is also planning a fund that tracks the price of wheat.
UBS E-TRACS CMCI Livestock ETN - Tracks the price of cattle and lean hogs. I buy raw pork, so this would be a great one for me but it could also hedge all of your pork related meat products.
If somebody purchased the appropriate amount of CORN six months ago you could have been mostly hedged against the cheese price run-up. We are not nearly big enough to negotiate long term contract with suppliers to hedge commodity prices, but these funds could allow at least some control.
Disclaimer - I haven’t done a full amount of research on these yet, I don’t know how good the correlation is, I don’t know what the management costs are, I haven’t done the financial engineering to determine the proper amounts to purchase to hedge. Don’t buy these on my recommendation! I just think they’re an interesting possibility.
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