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Re:As crops rot, millions go hungry in India by btilly on Monday July 02, 2012 @02:45AM (#4187657)
Futures do not change how big the price swing is from year to year - they just let you control now the cost you'll have in a few months.

It is also a technique mostly for businesses, not consumers. How many consumers do you hear about controlling next month's food bill by buying their produce on a future's market? Right, none.

Re:As crops rot, millions go hungry in India by moonchrome on Monday July 02, 2012 @03:31AM (#4187770)
Are you implying that you buy your food from the farmers or are you're telling me that the food industry/retailers can't estimate the consumer demand and make contracts/futures on that ? And how exactly do futures not change the price swings from year to year ?
Re:As crops rot, millions go hungry in India by btilly on Tuesday July 03, 2012 @06:35PM (#4196566)
The latter. Futures do not change the supply or demand, and therefore do not change the overall results of a supply-demand curve. What they do is allow people to estimate where it will eventually land, and choose whether to lock in prices some distance in advance.

This ignores a subtlety. If one consumer locks in a large fraction of the supply at a low price, then the supply is smaller than expected, you've made the supply-demand problem more extreme for everyone else. So futures allow entities to lessen their own volatility, but that increases everyone else's volatility.