Planning for our weeklong trip to Kochi India during the first week of February, I saw a reference to some sort of Pepper trading market in Kochi.
A quick search of Google didn't turn out very well, as most of the results were news articles on the struggling futures exchange, or press releases regarding ways the exchange's stewards were going to modify the contracts to make them more liquid. It sounded like no one wanted to buy forward pepper, only sell. One-sided markets are a common problem with new exchanges.
Fortunately I found a reference to a name change for the exchange, and when I tried their new monniker, I got a better result, the IPSTA website.
They have up-to-date prices. That signals that at least the exchange is not dead. It was hard to tell if there is any real volume trading or not. Bizarrely, the exchange wants to charge for market reports. I can't see how this encourages participation by speculators.
I sent a note off to them, asking if they might give me the professional courtesy of a tour of their exchange. Hopefully they'll grant me a behind-the-scenes look. Could be an interesting photo-and-essay piece.
Posted by Nils Blutig at December 8, 2002 09:39 PM | TrackBack