Members of the NCBA CME Working Group will be in Washington D.C. this week working on a solution to what they say is a broken cattle market. Brad Kooima, a cattle feeder and co-owner of Kooima and Kaemingk Commodities in Sioux Center, Iowa serves on the committee. He says they will be meeting with members of the House Ag Committee, CME and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
He says the cattle futures have been volatile ever since the market when entirely electronic and the cash market is also broken….both due to the lack of transparency. So Kooima says they will focus on remedies for both problems.
Kooima says they’ll also share their concerns with CME Group officials about their proposal to change the live cattle futures contract to one that would be settled to a cash index.
He admits cash transparency will be difficult to achieve with only 1-percent of the cash cattle traded in Texas on a negotiated basis. However, he says they have make some changes or the cattle business will end up like the broiler industry.
