THE COST OF FORWARD CONTRACTING IN THE CIF NOLA EXPORT BID MARKET

The CIF NOLA “river market” represents an important but opaque forward market that serves Gulf exporters and elevators. CIF NOLA bids function similarly to traditional forward contracts; however, like a futures market, firms can offset their forward contractual obligations by offsetting positions in a liquid off-exchange paper market. Analysis shows grain sellers pay a risk premium for fall harvest delivery contracts. However, outside of fall harvest, contract liquidity, coupled with a good institutional balance of long and short market participants, mostly removes the pricing bias commonly found in farmer forward contracting in corn and soybeans.