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Comment by lucianbr | Hacker News Reader

That's so strange. What makes other commodities amenable to having futures, but not onions? Or are they going to ban each thing in turn the first time someone corners the market and causes trouble?

Apparently it's onions and box office returns? What weird corner cases. Why not strawberries too?

Can't the onions futures market be regulated the same way as all the others?

If anything, this makes me think all the rules are arbitrary.

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It has more to do with the nature of the product – can it be reasonably stored in bulk for length without eroding in quality. This goes for anything physically settled. Look at the agricultural products traded at the CME and you'll see there aren't any markets for perishable products like strawberries.

What about orange juice futures?

We saw Trading Places.

Lol frozen concentrate

But is there a law forbidding strawberry futures? The wiki page mentions only onions and box office returns. How can other perishable futures "ban themselves" while onions need to be banned?

They're not banning themselves. There's no market for them. A market will arise based on the market size, product characteristics, etc. Without anyone willing to make markets and trade strawberries, there's no futures market for them. All that to say, there's no need for a law banning something if there's no willing market for it. There was an onions futures market and that's why the law is specific to onions.

> What makes other commodities amenable to having futures, but not onions?

Nothing (at least for other perishable foodstuff); law often doesn't even in theory have a broad universal theory behind it, but instead responds narrowly to observed or perceived immediate problems.

> The fact that futures markets are so heavily regulated, precisely because of the market failures described above, should aid in understanding why markets do not "predict", they "determine". Have you ever wondered why trading onion futures has been banned since the 50s?

You're saying the answer to the above question is "because there was an immediate problem with onion futures in the 50s". I don't think that's what they meant. That would be unrelated to "the fact that futures markets are so heavily regulated".

I guess if everyone has a different opinion, and every reply comes from a different person, there's no "discussion" as I understand it.

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