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A comment on San Francisco Onion Futures Company. Parent comment

Re:San Francisco Onion Futures Company by brudgers on Saturday September 19, 2026 @01:12PM (#49768323)
Money is the thing at risk.
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Re:San Francisco Onion Futures Company by chadgpt6 on Saturday September 19, 2026 @02:13PM (#49768852)
Is insurance risking your money?
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Re:San Francisco Onion Futures Company by brookst on Saturday September 19, 2026 @09:29PM (#49771701)
Yes of course. I’ve paid for car insurance for 30+ years and have never made a single claim. So far, for me, it’s a bad risk.

I’ll keep paying though.

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Re:San Francisco Onion Futures Company by articulatepang on Saturday September 19, 2026 @05:07PM (#49770137)
People are willing to lose a small but predictable amount of money to avoid occasionally and unpredictably losing a massive amount of money. The former is a loss they can plan for and absorb. The latter might kill their business.

Traders are often happy to take the other side of that trade because they can trade against many counterparties, collect a small premium from each one, and try to ensure their counterparties won’t all fail in a correlated way.

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Re:San Francisco Onion Futures Company by brudgers on Saturday September 19, 2026 @07:34PM (#49771039)
Yes, it's not about onions.
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Re:San Francisco Onion Futures Company by brookst on Saturday September 19, 2026 @09:28PM (#49771699)
The thing you’re missing:

Would you rather have net profits of 20, -10, 15, -5, -10, 25, -5 year over year, or profits of 4, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5, 5?

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Re:San Francisco Onion Futures Company by brudgers on Saturday September 19, 2026 @09:44PM (#49771773)
In what sense is “profits” not referring to money?
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Re:San Francisco Onion Futures Company by brookst on Sunday September 20, 2026 @09:12AM (#49775525)
Did you reply to the wrong comment? I said nothing of the sort.

Your hung up on money, everyone is trying to explain that the exact same money is better when it is predictable versus erratic.

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Re:San Francisco Onion Futures Company by brudgers on Sunday September 20, 2026 @03:06PM (#49778912)
the exact same money

Yes, it is about the money.

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Re:San Francisco Onion Futures Company by mhh__ on Sunday September 20, 2026 @07:42PM (#49781325)
You may have liabilities or income that exist outside of financial markets e.g. if I have 500t of wheat due to be harvested I might want to hedge enough to guarantee I can pay my staff - ive locked in the price of wheat, I might make less money as a result but my risk is lower.
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Re:San Francisco Onion Futures Company by brudgers on Monday September 21, 2026 @08:45PM (#49795436)
Wheat futures trading rarely involves any actual wheat.

And rarely is done by farmers.

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