Abstract
The purpose of this paper is twofold: First, we look at the fundamentals of spot prices of corn and wheat and analyse several measures of dispersion, arguing that the use of the standard deviation of prices is more instructive for regulators and world food organisations than volatility, that is, standard deviation of returns. Second, we look at alternative predictors of corn and wheat spot prices and exhibit that the average value of the forward curve introduced by Borovkova and Geman (2006) performs better than individual forward prices to forecast spot prices at future dates.
Key words: Grain markets, volatility of returns, standard deviation of prices, geometric average of forward prices, commodity spot price predictors.
