The purpose of this research report is to evaluate the pricing performance of market advisory services for the 1995-2003 corn and soybean crops. Four basic indicators of performance are applied to advisory program prices and revenues over 1995-2003. Test results provide little evidence that...

The purpose of this report is to improve understanding of USDA crop forecasting methods, performance and market impact. A review of USDA's forecasting procedures and methodology confirmed the objectivity and consistency of the forecasting process over time. No changes in methodology occurred in...

Numerous empirical studies have investigated the profitability of technical trading rules in a wide variety of markets, and many of them found positive profits. Despite positive evidence about profitability and improvements in testing procedures, skepticism about technical trading profits...

The purpose of this research report is to summarize the pricing performance of professional market advisory services for the 1995-2003 corn and soybean crops. First, advisory programs in corn do not consistently beat market benchmarks, but tend to consistently beat the farmer benchmark. Second,...

This report presents marketing profiles and loan deficiency payment/marketing loan gain profiles for the advisory services followed by the AgMAS Project for the 2001 soybean crop. Marketing profiles are constructed by plotting the cumulative net amount priced under each program’s set of...

The purpose of this report is to review the evidence on the profitability of technical analysis. To achieve this purpose, the report comprehensively reviews survey, theoretical and empirical studies regarding technical trading strategies. We begin by overviewing survey studies that have directly...

This study sought to examine the nature of farmers’ use of market advisory services based on the results of a survey of US crop producers. The survey revealed that market advisory service users tend to be significantly more risk seeking than non-users. Survey results indicated a large range in...

This report presents marketing profiles and loan deficiency payment/marketing loan gain profiles for the advisory services followed by the AgMAS Project for the 1995 through 2000 corn crops. Marketing profiles are constructed by plotting the cumulative net amount priced under each program's set...

The purpose of this research report is to summarize the features of several types of "new generation" grain marketing contracts. Over the last several years, new types of grain marketing contracts have been developed by the grain industry in an attempt to improve the results of the marketing...