The Board is Not What it Used to Be!

Today was the first day of the Top Producer Conference.  The first session was very interesting.  Dr. Tom Deans, author of Every Family’s Business gave a talk on how many farmers really should be looking at “selling” the farm instead of “gifting” the farm.

Too many times, the gift of the farm ends up creating inter-family squabbles, while a sale, either to family or outside parties can greatly reduce this risk.  Definitely food for thought.

I then headed over the Chicago Board of Trade to meet up with Thomas Grasifi of Indiana Grain Company.  He took me down the floor and it became very apparent that trading has changed dramatically.  The pits where futures are traded were just about empty.  We spent some time at the corn options pit which was very interesting.

We then came back down for the close of the meats at about 1 pm and for about 2 minutes you could hear the roar from the pit action and then it was basically done for the day.

At 1:15, the Fed had their announcement and you had action in gold, financials and the equity indexes till the close.

Almost all of the futures trading is now electronic and it may not take much longer for more of the options, etc. to be done this way.

Paul Neiffer, CPA