Odd Lots - Why Wheat is the World's Most Exciting Market Right Now

Episode Date: July 17, 2017

Financial markets around the world are stuck in a long period of low volatility and boredom. But one pocket is seeing some wild action -- grains. Spring wheat (a form of high-protein wheat grown in the northern Midwest) has been on a tear, alongside action in soy and corn. What explains the whipsaw? Joe and Tracy speak with Tommy Grisafi, a longtime trader who works as a risk manager at Advance Trading, a firm that helps farmers take advantage of financial markets. Grisafi walks us through the history of the market, how technology is dramatically changing things and why things have suddenly gotten so darn volatile.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's vanguard.com slash audio. All investing is subject to risk vanguard marketing corporation Distributor. Oh, and welcome to another episode of the Oddlots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal. And I'm Tracy Allaway. You know, Tracy, I think we talked a few weeks ago on maybe a month ago. I lose track of the time about how there wasn't very much volatility in markets these days.

And it was kind of a source of frustration for, you know, markets journalists. Yeah, we talk about that a lot, I feel. Yeah. You know, we're always talking about it internally. I forget which episode it brought it up on. maybe there's a little bit of market volatility picked up, but it's still kind of a big issue that, you know, where is the volatility? It's very boring. Are you going to tell me that you've actually found some volatility in the market? Yes, Tracy, I have some great news for you. I have found the volatility in the market. I have found a corner of the market that is not boring at all, that is thrilling every day. And not only that, it's not even that obscure. It's actually one of the, it's a crucial market.

for the entire world. Really? Part of me doesn't want to ask because I think it will be really obscure. But, okay, what is it? No, it's not obscure. I'm not going to, like, cite, like, you know, the spread between Norwegian frozen salmon and Norwegian fresh salmon or anything like this. No, the answer is the grains market. All right.

You said it wasn't obscure. Well, come on. Greens are not obscure. I mean, most people eat bread all the time and cereal. and soft agricultural commodities are pretty important to most people. I know they're a big part of life, but I guess when people think about the market, they don't necessarily think about the commodities market, even though I suppose in fairness a lot of the current financial instruments that we have in markets

actually developed from commodities, right? Like futures, I think were originally commodities-oriented. Every time you read about the history of futures markets, it starts with some made-up story, some fantasy story about the farmer, plants the corn and wants to lock at the price and sells it to the speculator. You know, that's like, that's the classic description of how commodity futures work. And guess what? That's exactly what we're going to be talking about today, because the action in grains lately, particularly in wheat, but also soybeans. and corn has been very exciting and volatile. And if you like charts that go up and down very fast, you should be paying attention to grains.

All right. Well, I've always had a soft spot for commodities, mostly because I'm amused by the notion of accidentally taking physical delivery of like a bushel of corn or something. But I'm looking forward to this episode because, as you say, we need a little bit of excitement in markets right now. Exactly. And so today on the Outlots podcast, we are going to be talking to Tommy Grosafi. He is a risk manager at Advanced Trading, which is a firm that helps players in the agricultural space, farmers, grain elevator operators, hedge and manage their risk.

So basically right in this whole story of why the futures market exists. And in addition to that, he trades these futures himself. Tommy, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. It's a pleasure to be here. And what exciting time in the agricultural space. I was listening before. And yes, it's a very boring time in commodities. It's been a rough go for commodity traders the last few years, someone who trades gold or crude oil.

It's just not sexy like it used to be when I first met you on Twitter in 0809. Yeah, those were the good old days. What I miss. And I say, corn's limit down. And, you know, think about when the Fukushima. accident happened in Japan, how crazy we were. And it's just changed. And there's a lot of reasons why it's changed. But, you know, let's move forward. You know, you can't look back. All we have is where we are today, right? Right. And what we have today, you know, as you said,

a lot of the markets aren't very sexy right now from a volatility perspective. But one market that is very sexy is the wheat market. And that's been, that's been going absolutely wild lately. Yeah, for those of us who haven't, for those of us who haven't been following the wheat market, as much as we should, Tommy, can you give us a sort of high-level overview of what's been happening? Sure. There's three wheat futures. There's one, the Minneapolis Grain Exchange that's up in Minneapolis. There's the Kansas City Board of Trade, which was bought by the CME group, but it was in Kansas City. And then there's the Board of Trade wheat contract, which probably has the deepest most liquidity. But wheat's not wheat. So I have. a customer who grows wheat in North Dakota. It goes to North Dakota mill, gets put on a truck, and that truck brings that flour all the way to New York. And that's what that weed up there is what's used in your pizza dough and your bagels that New York's famous for. And I'm sure we could all relate. It's also the high gluten wheat. So if you're into the gluten-free, you're probably

not eating much of that. So then you have your Casey wheat. That's your traditional breads and whatnot. and then you have your board of trade wheat, which would be like a cracker. And so wheat's not wheat. It's graded by proteins. And you'll read tweets or you'll hear information. They're bidding up protein, and you may not have understood what that meant, but now you will. Oh, I always thought protein referred to the animal, like a hog or cow. But when people say they're bidding up protein, it means that the wheat with the higher protein content that stuff up in Minneapolis is selling for a premium.

Exactly. It can trade for dollars over. So currently, wheat's a couple dollars over the other wheat. And so there's people who spread all three wheat against each other. You could buy a Minneapolis, sell the board. You could buy a mini sell Kansas City. You could sell mini and buy the other two. And lots of combinations, lots of spreading going on, lots of fun.

And unfortunately, it's been slow for quite a while. And that's how I ended up with this position at Advanced Trading was they said, I love the grains. I love the commodities. How can I go help people? I went down to the Board of Trade in 1990 on a high school field trip. And if you eat three meals a day, you're affected by ag, how can I go educate the American farmer on how to better use these products? That's how I ended up in North Dakota.

I realized, and this is important where you could use it in other segments of Bloomberg in finance, is that technology has changed. So when you talk about a stock like Monsanto, Tommy, how are they – How do you have a customer who's two miles from the North Dakota border growing wheat and corn and beans? And so when these big crops come along and everyone's like, where they come from? It's really due to the recent technology and modern changes of the seed. And it's just amazing, just absolutely amazing. I just want to say, Tracy, I've already learned so much on this episode, I think about two minutes in.

So this is great. I want to, let's sort of break things down. So we started on a little bit about all the volatility lately. Let's back up for a second and then return to that later. You're a risk manager at advanced trading. You talked about how you go up to the Dakotas, help farmers and stuff. That sounds like what I was talking about, that textbook story that they always tell about how the futures market serves farmers. Is that right? Tell us what you do in that capacity. You know, Joe, you couldn't be more on the money. And so the Board of Trade in the CMEE group and the Minneapolis Grain Exchange,

the Minneapolis Grain Exchange was actually formed by members of the Cargill family. So you want to talk about old money, there you have it. I could send you a little tidbit for you to read. So the old days, a farmer would see the prices were higher, and they would put their wheat on a horse and buggy and bring it to Minneapolis. And by the time they got there, the market would collapse. They said, this just isn't really. right. They said, I wish we had something to determine the price of what it was in the future. And that's how

futures markets started in Chicago with corn, wheat, and beans, and butter. And you read, you know, those are the classic Jesse Livermore stories when you read reminiscence of a stock operator. Anyone listening, you know, buy it on audio tape or read the book. If you haven't, if you're involved in commodities, there's no way you haven't read that book. And it's the old school commodity trading. And the futures markets are very, they were very, they were very, very influential to the modern-day stock market and very influential to the options market because they started trading options on futures before they started trading options on stocks. And that's how the Chicago Board of Options Exchange was started.

But nonetheless, going to your original question. So I'm up in North Dakota where technologies change. They have beautiful fertile dirt in the Red River Valley, which anyone who is not familiar with there, there's a river called the Red River. It flows north. It's one of only two rivers, I believe, in the world, the flow from south. the north, and it goes up to Winnipeg. And so when you're in North Dakota and it rains, your water actually goes up to Canada

along the Red River. But this soil along the Red River Valley is so fertile. And technology changed over the last 20 years, and so did the climate. It started raining more up in the Dakotas. Not this year, but just in general, it started raining more. And so you have this beautiful fertile soil, this seed that in the old days, Joe and Tracy, you'd plant a corn seed, and you needed about 100 days for it to mature. they can have corn seed now that's 70-day corn seed.

So you plant it in the ground, 70 days later, the plants mature, and you're harvesting it. So a lot's change in technology. So the folks up from the Chicago Board of Trade to Fargo, North Dakota, 750 miles, and those folks up there couldn't feel more removed from the price action at the Board of Trade, the CME group, and the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. And so I'm actually up there. I have a place up there now in office and an apartment. And they're educating people like the old-fashioned brokers used to do in the 60s and 70s and 80s and say, hey, this is a future.

But what's neat is with these options, they could actually manage your risk. And I'm not going to teach you guys anything about options. I know you know a lot about it, but the farmers felt removed from the exchange. But as you know, futures are 100% electronic now. So there's no difference if I'm sitting in my home in Valparaiso, Indiana, or my office at the Board of Trade, or my office in North Dakota. Matter of fact, no one even knows where I am. I have one of big fancy computers with eight screens and the Cisco voiceover IP phone. No one knows where you are.

And so I'm up there educating people showing them how to manage risk. Say, hey, I don't know why wheat's going up a dollar a day, but did you know you could set a floor with a put option? And so there's an education process, no different than, you know, people who had to learn, you know, the stock market education with these options the last 20 years. Wait, Tommy, I'm still thinking about, you know, the classic story. of the farmer who wants to kind of ensure his crop output. So when you come up with a futures contract for that, how do you get two sides of the trade? Like surely all the farmers back then were looking at the same information and they were all thinking, well, you know, there might be a drought next year and so I want the following protection. Who's taking the other side of that trade?

And what are they looking at that the farmers aren't? Sure. That's a great question. Are you talking about 50%? 100 years ago or modern day trading now? Well, I guess I'm curious about both. Like, what was it like 50 to 100 years ago and what's it like now? Well, it's much more fast pace now. Very hard with this electronic markets and high frequency trading. One thing the farmer's missing is they see the market go up and they always think they'll have time to sell it. Second thing is, is the whole world's super focused on the stock market because what did the stock market do the recent few weeks or what's it do every day when I watch Bloomberg? Dow Jones, it's,

new highs. It just, it's a nonstop machine. Maybe someday it'll go down and maybe it'll go down hard, but today and every other day it seems like the headlines are Dow Jones new high. Commodity markets are different. Again, anyone who's eaten three times a day is affected by ag. But America's not set up to have high ag prices. And if you don't believe me, look what happened when corn went to $8. It about put the dairy industry out of business. It about put the hog industry, the cattle industry. And so America's set up to run on affordable food. Matter of fact, when you look at the farm bills, it's called the Affordable Food Act. So to your question, things move a lot different now. 50 years ago, they didn't have options. So as far as a bushel of corn being $4 and you being able to spend

20 cents on a corn put, that didn't exist 50 years ago. Now, for $0,000, you can set that floor. You don't know how many bushels you're producing, but you can set that floor and you have something in insurance policy from four to zero. And in the old days, people were selling futures. And that's where the big nasty story started about, did you hear about so-and-so? He got caught in the futures market. And so that's where the big margin calls come from and all the other legendary stories that we hear about. Today's show is brought to you by Vanguard.

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all investing is subject to risk vanguard marketing corporation distributor. I think it's really interesting you mentioning technology, and I'm curious about how it changes the market in a couple of ways. So, I mean, I don't think people often think about that grains are sort of a product of technology, the idea that yields improve over time, the idea that, as you said, we can grow corn from seed to completion in a shorter period of time. that second aspect, the idea of being able to grow a crop more quickly, does that mean that supply becomes more sensitive to prices? In other words, if we see a big spike and say corn and soybean prices or a big drop, that farmers can switch their crop to respond to those price signals faster than they could have in the old days when the lead time was much longer? Absolutely. Companies are very accommodating the Dow DuPont.

Let's talk about that real quick. There's only a couple seed companies left. I mean, Dow and DuPont are trying to merge. Bear and Monsano are trying to merge. China come in and bought Sinjana. I noticed Eardai, Dow spun off part of their seed group to a Chinese company. So there's big money in this seed business. And if there's one thing that's hurting the American farmer, if any farmers are out there listening to this podcast,

is they've underestimated how much technology has helped them. and they're still mentally marketing a crop like it's 1995 or 05. And so they're thinking they're going to grow 135 bushel corn, and they're growing 195 bushel corn. And so the American farmer, if you go to a trade show, if you go to any ag show, there's the John Deere tractors, there's this planter, there's this fertilizer, there's this seed company, tens of thousands of farmers at these shows. You go to a marketing meeting, there's Tommy Grosofi up there on stage talking. and 18 farmers in nowhere in North Dakota. They don't want to talk marketing. Everyone loves production ag.

It's fun. It's exciting. It's sexy. It's fun driving a tractor. If you ever haven't, give me a call, and we'll set you up with one of the customers I have in Pennsylvania, and you go out there and interview them, and it's fun. It's one of the best jobs you can have in America.

It's not one of the most profitable anymore, but it's one of the best jobs you can have. And so technology, there's things like auto-stair. There's a tractor being. developed by case iH that's uh what's the word anonymous uh it drives itself what do you call autonomous yeah don't ask me to spell it i could barely say that's going to ruin one of the best jobs in america well yeah there'll be a guy driving another tractor next to it maybe planting the crop and and that tractor will be tearing up the ground next to it so there'll be someone around with a remote

control almost like flying a drone so technology's changed agricultural agriculture in a big way and so i'm a Technology Bowl. When I do speeches, I come from a stock trading background. I started trading E-mini S&Ps when they started on Globex. I remember the first day I traded E-minis the day they opened. I think they traded 18,000 contracts. And I had a Globex station at my office and a Project Day. And so I was always big on technology. What hit me, I went over to Germany, and I saw that the Boone contract was trading 100% electronic, that London had lost it. Joe, I don't even know if you're old enough to remember all this stuff, but the Boone used to trade in pits in London, and then it moved over to the Urex Exchange. And when I realized there were no pits anymore, it made me think when I went

back to Chicago in 99, 2000, when are the pits going to go away in Chicago? And most of them are gone now. And so I'm a big technology bull. And I like to get out there and educate the farmer. What's funny about the American farmer is if you ask them to see their iPhone or whatever smart device they use, They have every app. They can tell you how much it rained in every field. They can tell you how much fertilizer they need. They get text and emails to add more fertilizer to, it's almost like a recipe to grow this perfect crop. And so if you aren't improving through technology and better marketing, your neighbor is, and they're going to pass you up.

And I'll tell you one other thing, and this should scare people. Agriculture is not just an American thing. When I went to the John Deer factory in Waterloo, Iowa, 60% of the John Deer tractors are going overseas. And so if you, you know, follow Howard Buffett. Follow Warren Buffett's son Howard. He's a farmer in Central Illinois right next to one of my customers. He's going all over the world showing people how to grow crops. Technology and agriculture is a world market.

And although America's still a leader, if they don't watch themselves, they're going to get passed up. Tommy, you just reminded me that one of our coworkers and actually a previous oughtlots, guest Lorkin-Rosh Kelly has a cow farm. And he was telling us once, he actually has a smartphone app that I think tells him when his cows are about to give birth. So technology in all types of agriculture right now. But I'm just wondering, when we start to think about technology, you know, when Joe and I talk about it every day, we usually talk about it in the context of companies like Apple or Amazon. And I'm wondering if a similar dynamic is present in agriculture where you get these big farming companies that essentially develop an edge because they have

lots of money to spend on tech and that makes them more efficient. And then does that mean that they go on to become big, big players in the commodities trading market as well? I think you're 100% correct. The American farmers getting bigger, not smaller. They're getting more efficient. It's really hard to run any business without adequate capital. I've met some incredibly large farmers.

And if you're not getting with it, you're going behind. One thing you touched on, something very important, and I want you, it's going to be what I talk about next year in my speaking season, is that Amazon recently bought Whole Foods. And Amazon might single-handedly be changing how we shop for food and how agriculture and what products we grow in America. I think sometimes there's a pushback against non-GMO or this thing or that thing. And the American farmer has to be listening to what the consumer wants.

And Amazon knows what the consumer wants because no one has more data on what you like to purchase than Amazon. Would you guys agree? No question. So watch out for Amazon Whole Foods and how that changes agriculture the next five years, 10 years. The supermarket industry, there's a supermarket in my hometown called Strachan Bantil. Family store for 50, 60 years, they filed bankruptcy a week ago. You know, why is that happening? What's going on?

How could this family mom and pop grocery store with 25 change be filing bankruptcy? Things are changing and agriculture is changing. But I had no doubt in my mind. The single reason I'm up in South Dakota, Minnesota, North Dakota is because technology changed and folks are able to grow way more bushels in a shorter time. And when that happens with your supply and demand, that makes the markets go down. We've talked about how the market works. We've talked about some of the big picture changes, the role of technology. Now let's get it to, you know, we were talking about it in the beginning.

This market has been pretty volatile lately. If you like exciting markets, grains are where it's at, not just wheat, also some pretty shocking action in soybeans lately, which very quickly erased a big downturn. What's the big picture of why we're seeing such exciting swings right now? Is it all weather? is it demand from overseas? What are the factors? I'll take choice C, all the above. So China has an insatiable demand for our soybeans. Every time the government tells you that we have a lot of soybeans, and that would make traders and speculars think the price is going to go down,

all of a sudden at the end of the year, our ending stocks are lower. The story in wheat is it's more of a world market, problems in Australia, Europe, America. we had temperatures of 95 degrees and 30-mile-an-hour winds for three days in South Dakota and North Dakota, and it absolutely stunted the wheat crop. What's interesting about commodities is people kind of wait to buy them. So commodities have been so cheap for so long that they just go hand them out, and they just buy them as they need them. And then once they start to go up and speculation starts, people start to panic.

And I think we've seen a little of that in commodities, and maybe it'll straighten them. itself out. Maybe it was just a short-term blip, but there was a point where I didn't think I really knew how to trade commodities anymore. And then after the last three months, I can say, I didn't forget how to trade. They just weren't busy. This is the busiest we've been in years, years and years. And it's a wonderful market to trade. It's very dynamic. There's a lot of people in there. One of the things Tracy had asked before was, so you got the farmer selling, who's buying? Well, look at Tyson chickens. They need X amount of corn and meal every day. And And so anyone who's feeding an animal needs to be buying corn and meal and anyone who's growing the grain needs to be selling it.

And then the consumers are there nonstop buying it, not only in the U.S., but all over the world. And so it's a very dynamic market. It's probably a lost art. I have to say, I don't know how many humans are left trading these markets. I don't know how many Tom Grysoffes are left trading at 7 o'clock at night, trading at 6 in the morning, watching the weather come out at 4.30. I wish I knew it's definitely changed. And we've lost that human element to the markets.

And I don't know that we'll ever get it back. Yeah, Tracy, when I called Tommy this morning to sort of lock down the details for today's discussion, you know, I knew he's in Midwest time zone. So I said, are you up? He's like, oh, yeah, I've been up for a while trading the corn. So I really enjoyed hearing that. You know, Tommy, you kind of touched on what I wanted to ask you next, which is, you know, you mentioned speculation. So I guess how much of the trading that we've seen, for instance, in one. wheat would come from speculation. And you also mentioned fewer human traders. So I want to ask as well,

to what degree do you have sort of technology-driven momentum traders in the grains market nowadays? They're there. And so a high-frequency trading firm might not have been trading hard red spring wheat out of the Minneapolis Exchange a few months ago. But when they see it start to move, they get the programmers together with the traders and then they go at it and they start making a market in it, and both the futures and options. And they're very disciplined. And it creates large moves and volatility. And anyone who trades knows volatility is your friend, but there's just,

just technologies change. Most of the traders I know from the Board of Trade either retired because they made so much money or they're driving for Uber now. So I do not know of many humans who are left trading markets. It's a human working with a programmer and a kid who's great in math and they're and they have these programs running, and they run all night and all day, and they're very unemotional. Humans are emotional, and that's what makes markets move, and we're missing that, which is interesting, because sometimes grains have these mini flash crashes just like the stock market did seven years ago.

You wonder, if there's so many people in line to buy, how did we just break X amount of pennies, or you saw it happen in Amazon stock a few weeks ago? How does a company like Amazon break 10% in a few minutes? and you're seeing it markets all over the world. So Tommy kind of thinks in some ways that markets aren't as liquid as you think when they get a little nuts. When it's a nice, quiet day, there's plenty of bids and offers. But when the stuff hits the fan, where are all the people left to trade? That's why all the bids and offers disappear.

It's a real problem. It's a real problem in America. I don't know how we straighten it out because I do think we're the core of all trading in the world. But you want to do what's right by the customer and you want to provide that deep liquid market. To sort of wrap things up here, one of the things that I really like about this conversation is not only our other markets have there really not been very much volatility, but it feels like they're all sort of the same story. It feels like there's only one market. So whether it's gold, whether it's oil, whether it's U.S. Treasuries, German boons, the Japanese yen, U.S. tech stocks. Everything feels hyper-corps. correlated. Everything is macro. Everything is the Fed. When talking to you about grains, it really feels like a different story. It really feels like a world where it's not all about the Fed. It's not all about what a druggie say today. And it's just, it's very refreshing. Well, it's fun. I wish more people

would get involved. And if anyone needs education, I'd always put a handout to educate. One thing, Joe, is that when the Fed says something or when the Treasury releases bonds, because I grew up in the 30-year Treasury pit at the Chicago Border Trade, one of the biggest, baddest pits in the world. But when a farmer sells grain, there's over 2,500 elevators. They sell grain. So they don't get to sell grain at the Board of Trade price. You really sell grain in your backyard.

And that's more important than people realize. So there's no central bank. There's just local grain elevators in little towns conducting business. And that's what's amazing about the grain industry. Well, I think that is a great place to leave it. And your offer to educate people about this space, I hope a lot of our listeners will take you up. Tommy Grosofi of Advanced Trading, thank you very much. I learned a ton in this conversation. Thank you, Joe and Tracy. My pleasure. So, Tracy, did that deliver on my promise that there is an exciting area of the markets that's not boring? Yeah, it absolutely did. It also, it kind of warms my heart to think about trading in an actual physical commodity and one that's so, I guess, emotionally attached to our daily lives, right? Like, we all sit down and eat cereal or bread on a daily basis. So it's fun to think about the trading that goes on around those commodities. Yeah, there's just so much going on here in terms of the intersecting stories. And it just feels, you know, if you think,

about like buying a, you know, a 10-year treasury or a future or even a share of stock, you just like, you look at a spreadsheet and you plug in a series of numbers. So the idea that there is still this market where Tommy is still traveling from his home in Indiana to his apartment in North Dakota, explaining to farmers how the market works. They're getting their bids from the local grain elevator. The grain elevator is obviously reacting to. to the demand from people who need to feed cows or perhaps not so distant future, the demands from Amazon and Whole Foods for what kind of food they want to stock.

For obvious reasons, there's a certain refreshing reality to it. Yeah, and the Amazon angle and the technology angle is really interesting, too, because I think that's where it all starts to feed in to the global economy in the sense that, you know, when we think about inflation and the fact that we haven't had much of it, for the past almost a decade now. A lot of people tend to think about consumer goods and the idea that those are getting cheaper because technology is developing.

Not many people, I don't think, just yet think that there's a new tractor model out and that's making the growing of crops much more efficient. And so the price of flour is falling. And that's feeding into prices as well. So that's another important angle here, I think. Yeah, so much so much. good stuff. You know, this last few weeks have been super exciting from the grains market. But even when

things quiet down, I think I'm going to start paying attention to this world more because it just feels, it just feels different than everything else. You need to buy yourself a little farm and do some corn trading early morning. You know what? Actually, when I retire, what I want my part-time retirement job, I want to get like a job like at a radio station in Iowa doing the local grain report. I think Oh, you're a good retirement job. That's my good. Yeah. I think you'd be good at it, Joe. Thank you, Tracy. This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthall. You can follow me on Twitter at the stalwart. And I'm Tracy Allaway. I'm on Twitter at Tracy Allaway. And you can find Tommy on Twitter at Indiana Grain Co. Remember to reach out to him and he'll teach you about the market. And our producer, Sarah Patterson, follow her, Sarah Pat with two teas. Thanks for listening. The news doesn't stop on the weekends.

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