I would like to know historical sugar price information. 
Specifically, do prices increase for March futures once the
October position is closed.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 08 Aug 2006 09:40 PDT

thentzel-ga,

I can look into this for you.  I assume you are interested in world
(non-US) sugar futures, but if you wanted US futures instead, please
let me know by posting a Clarification to your question.

Thanks,

pafalafa-ga

thentzel-ga,


It took a bit of digging, but I managed to find some very nice
historical graphs of daily prices for Sugar 11 (global) futures:


http://futures.tradingcharts.com/histcharts.php?cbase=SU&year=2006&cpp=8&action=Display+Charts


There are no obvious trends in the data, which isn't surprising.  As
far as I know, sugar futures prices are much more affected by external
events such as weather anomalies, consumer spending, crop diseases,
subsidy policies, and competition from other sweeteners, than they are
by internal factors such as the closing of a particular contracts
period.

You can see in the graphs that post-October prices sometimes rise,
sometimes fall, and in some years, stay pretty flat.

A look at the high/low prices for the year also shows an absence of
any obvious patterns in the pricing:



Sugar 11 Months of High/Low prices:


2006: Feb/Jan (through July 2006)

2005: Dec/Jan

2004: Oct/Jan

2003: Feb/Dec

2002: Jan/June

2001: Dec/Oct

2000: Oct/Mar

1999: Jan/May


If there's a pattern there, then I certainly can't see it!

More to the point, if there *were* any obvious patterns in the price
trends, then market forces would tend to immediately erase them, as
those buying on the trend, would jack up the current prices for the
futures options, if you see what I mean.

Anyway, I trust this information fully answers your question.  

However, please don't rate this answer until you have everything you
need.  If you would like any additional information, just post a
Request for Clarification to let me know how I can assist you further,
and I'm at your service.

All the best,

pafalafa-ga

search strategy -- Google searches on:

sugar futures

nybot

"sugar no OR number 11"

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Request for Answer Clarification by thentzel-ga on 13 Aug 2006 16:09 PDT

Sorry for the slow response, my access to the Internet is sporadic.

Thank you for the graphs, they are quite useful.  Do you happen to
know how to generate graphs that show the expiration of future
contracts besides the "current" one?

Thanks,
Tim

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Clarification of Answer by pafalafa-ga on 13 Aug 2006 16:37 PDT

Thanks for getting back to me on this.

But I have to admit, I don't know quite enough about futures to be
sure what you're asking, much less know how to generate the graphs in
question.

If you want to clarify what it is you need at this point, I'll see if
I can find any additional information.

Also, you may want to consider posting a new question, so that other
researchers can join the chase.

paf