Twenty-some years ago, the CME came up with the Variable Storage Rate program as a way of keeping physical bushels of wheat (usually) moving through the system.
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I argued against it then from a grain merchandising point of view based on the idea it did not solve the lack of demand issue, or slow US production.
Don’t Miss a Day: From crude oil to coffee, sign up free for Barchart’s best-in-class commodity analysis. These days I'm still against VSR as it can skew algorithm systems that possibly use percent of full financial carry in trading equations.
Those of you who have followed me through the years know I can be – what’s a mild word for it – opinionated. Back in the day when people used to know me, I had a number of characteristics assigned to me: Being a curmudgeon, a crank, an endlessly bearish to name but a few. (Given the 2026 edition of Commodity Classic is coming to an end Friday, I’m reminded of a story. At the conference in New Orleans one morning, as I took the stage to speak at a John Deere breakfast meeting my friend and host of the event played The Imperial March from Star Wars[i], also known as Darth Vader’s theme. As luck would have it, I was wearing my black suit that morning.)
