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San Francisco Onion Futures Company

San Francisco Onion Futures Company

z-mach9

Comments (62)

  • mimorigasaka
    The people behind this are a real (if silly) student organization at UChicago and Northwestern campaigning for the legalization of onion futures trading. Sometimes they will aggressively hand out free onions to passerby on campus. It's quite entertaining.They have a website also: https://onionfutures.org
  • cwal37
    For those who don’t know:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act(which also banned box office receipt futures)A fun thing is to go on FRED and make a graph with prices from onions and, say, corn to see the differences in volatility.
  • Barbing
    > FAQ>Is this legal?>Yes, to the best of our knowledge. 7 U.S. Code § 13-1 prohibits "contract[s] for the sale of [...] onions for future delivery [...] on or subject to the rules of any board of trade in the United States." The San Francisco Onion Futures Company is not a board of trade, defined as an "organized exchange or other trading facility". We sell contracts privately to individual buyers, and do not operate any exchange or secondary market.Performance art against that law?Also November onions are an absolute steal compared to the adjacent months!
  • gorgoiler
    [delayed]
  • shoo
    US Department of Agriculture publishes a national potato & onion report (issued daily!):https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/fvdidnop.pdfReaders may wish to skip ahead to page 4, where onions are discussed.
  • haakon
    Since this may be a legal gray area, they should host it on a Tor onion site.
  • Reason077
    Are these contract prices really "per onion"? Or are they actually per pound or per kg? Up to $9.39 seems very expensive if it's really the price for a single onion.I thought maybe they're some sort of special exotic onion variety, but I don't see anything to suggest that.
  • z-mach9
    Looking forward to my 2 onions in November! Anyone have some good recipes?
  • joegibbs
    Why was the law against onion futures passed in the first place? Couldn’t the same scheme be done with garlic, or sweet potatoes, or turnips or something?
  • chirau
    In an onion related note... is the "I sell onions on the internet" guy still around? I believe he was selling Vidalia onions.
  • envoked
    For those unfamiliar, there's an excellent Planet Money episode on how trading onion futures got banned in the 50s.https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/10/14/448718171/epis...
  • not-my-account
    These onion prices are quite high! The novelty probably drives up prices. Too bad there isn’t a liquid market for onions
  • wheybags
    Someone at the onion needs to see this.
  • retube
    These are not forwards, not futures.
  • rich_sasha
    I get that it’s a joke, since onion futures are illegal. But isn’t trading all futures regulated?
  • theogravity
    How many onions / lbs does a contract represent?
  • wocram
    These are 1 onion contracts? Outrageous!
  • briansm
    The Future's Bright. The Future's Onion.
  • dougSF70
    This is very good.
  • charcircuit
    >and for hedging risks associated with weather and market fluctuationsWhy don't existing futures cover this? Are onions unique in how sturdy they are? You can use derivatives of the weather itself even.
  • ElProlactin
    Can we tokenize this or get some prediction markets going on Polymarket?
  • leej111
    Maybe I open a tor store for people trading these onions with one another?
  • yieldcrv
    hell yeah, based