Rise of Algos Spurs Call to Give Human Grain Traders a Break

Spare a thought for grain traders. Not only are they getting whipsawed by news on Chinese trade tariffs, they’re also being elbowed aside as crop reports from the U.S. Department of Agriculture cause big price swings.

Now one academic is calling for the futures market to take a breather when the USDA data is released, in a similar way to how stocks are sometimes halted pending major company news. A brief pause would give everyone a fair chance to see the data and react, Charles Jones, senior vice dean at Columbia University Business School, said Thursday at a conference in Overland Park, Kansas, sponsored by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.