Monday, July 26, 2010

Choco-Tastic- Cornering the Market sort of works - sort of

Anthony Ward is buying Chocolate, a lot of it and well might he do so. Last time he did it he cleaned up 10s of millions of dollars. There will be a few shrill chocophiles distraught at the notion that their Yorkie bars will get more expensive but there's nothing to get too concerned about. Cornering a market is very difficult, not to mention illegal. John Ward is simply making an informed bet on the movement of a market and his purchases will do nothing to slow down Nestle, Frito-Lay and anyone else who presumably has long term off-takes for mega-tonnes of Cocoa from all over the globe.
The great fallacy with cornering a market is that you are hoovering up all the supply and can therefore cause a price rise and benefit from the abnormal price action. If your buying causes a shortfall, then so too will your selling cause an oversupply. There will be volatility along the way, but unless the supply-demand equilibrium as somehow fundamentally shifted (all chocophiles switch to rhubarb) then buying up of a large number of futures simply causes a short time blip in volatility and a long term nothing.
Every time someone has genuinely tried to corner the market they've done their dough.
Copper - Sumitomo
Silver - Hunt Brothers
You know it makes sense.