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Futures market concerns on cattlemen’s agenda

Concerns over extreme volatility in the cattle futures market will be in the spotlight today (Friday) at the Cattle Industry Convention in San Diego.

The president of the CME Group, Terry Duffy, will address those concerns in a meeting with the Cattle Marketing Committee of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA).

Garner, Iowa cattleman Ed Greiman chairs the Cattle Marketing committee.

“What I really want to come out of it is for the CME to spend more time and more money monitoring our contracts—and actually not just cattle, but all of the agricultural contracts—to make sure that they’re doing their job of price discovery and we just kind of level some things out and maybe flatten out this volatility a little bit,” Greiman says.

AUDIO: Ed Greiman

Nebraska producer and NCBA vice president Craig Uden says they want to know how the practice of high frequency trading is impacting cattle futures.

“We need capital investment into our business, so we need equity coming in,” Uden says. “But some of the technology and lack of the pit trades have created a lot of questions out there with our members.”

Uden says they want the futures to be a risk management tool, not a risk management inhibitor.

AUDIO: Craig Uden