Here he is at the New York Times:
The wholesale market for cheddar is typically a mild one. But the vagaries of supply and demand during the pandemic have caused sharp swings in cheese prices, which rose to record highs this month — just weeks after plummeting to nearly 20-year lows.....MUCH MORE
Consumers are buying way more cheese, even as the usually huge demand from restaurants and schools has fallen off. Dairy farmers and prepared-food companies, which supply ingredients to cheesemakers or buy their products, have seen disruptions in their businesses. Together, these countervailing forces have fueled the up-and-down trading in the market.
Like the price of oil, silver and hogs, cheese prices are set, in part, by traders in commodities markets. Each trading day at 11 a.m. Chicago time, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange operates a 10-minute session in which buyers and sellers — typically large dairy food cooperatives, cheese producers or other companies active in the industry — electronically trade roughly 40,000-pound truckloads of young, mild cheddar.
Cheese prices soared to a record high on June 8, when a 40-pound block of cheddar — the bench mark for cheese, akin to a barrel of West Texas Intermediate in oil markets — touched $2.585 a pound on the CME.
“It’s the most volatility that we’ve seen in the cheese market ever,” said Phil Plourd, president of Blimling and Associates, a dairy commodity consulting firm in Madison, Wisconsin. “If there was a cheese VIX index, it would have been spiking,” he added, referring to the volatility index often described as the stock market’s “fear gauge.”
Bulk prices for everything from mozzarella to Parmesan are quoted at a premium or a discount to the CME’s block cheddar price. And these wholesale prices filter through to the price consumers pay at groceries and restaurants.
And much like higher-profile markets, cheese prices have been whipsawed by the uncertainty facing the U.S. economy and bolstered by government actions....
Among his many awards and accolades is one I'm sure Matt still treasures, his Climateer Line of the Day (CLoD) award:
Climateer Line of the Day: MarketBeat does Bulwer-Lytton Edition (ACN)
MarketBeat's Matt Phillips has a walk-off home run. Game over.
From their post "Accenture for a Penny: MarketBeat’s Investigation Continues!":
That makes "It was a dark and stormy night" read like Blake in comparison...Like a rottweiler on a slightly undercooked leg of lamb, MarketBeat refuses to let go of its probe of the depths of Thursday’s Flash Crash, particularly the momentary trades that priced ostensibly healthy companies such as Accenture at one cent....
Unfortunately we had to follow up with:
MarketBeat's Matt Phillips Does Not Win the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Contest
Back in May I thought Mr. Phillips was a shoe-in, I mean he won the prestigious Climateer Line O'the Day and everything..
Like the Germans in May 1940.
A Five Star, Weekend Special, hit the ATM, lock:
