Director of Commodities and Energy Trilateral Inc. Berwyn, Illinois, United States
Description: Volatile and unpredictable commodity and ingredients prices make solid risk management expertise critically important for the baking industry. The volatility in prices for inputs such as wheat flour, vegetable oil and natural gas have baking industry buyers scrambling for coverage and trying to control margins. The purpose of this session is to provide insights and methods to reduce the variability of input costs and reduce the stress of managing markets. This includes learning how to objectively evaluate market risk and making effective strategy decisions with a goal of being proactive, not reactive, in one's business. Proactive decision making enables the business to be in an offensive versus defensive mode which is inherently more profitable. Topics to be covered: - Why do markets confuse most of the people most of the time? How to avoid being the sheep - Interpreting the personality of the markets - patterns, themes and direction - Identifying what valuable insights can be drawn from market data when managing price risk - Using both fundamental and technical analysis for pricing/hedging decisions and timing - Techniques to initiate positions and/or make position adjustments in changing market conditions
We will conclude with perspectives on current flour and veg-oil markets.
Classroom Engagement: Trilateral strives to create interactive audience engagement in it's training efforts. While lecture with slides and charts is necessary to convey information and concepts on risk management and hedging, the trainers also engage the audience in discussion of multiple market and strategy examples and illustrations, review of situations that the audience may want to explore and facilitate discussion about the current markets and managing risk going forward. A brief hedging simulation is included whereby the audience makes decisions based upon what they have learned in the session. The markets to be discussed include wheat flour, vegetable oil and natural gas as applicable specifically to the baking industry.
