Informatics funding to predict price movements

Professor Peter McBurney and Dr Elizabeth Black, of the Agents and Intelligent Systems group in the Department of Informatics, are partners in a Technology Strategy Board funded project to develop technologies that can help predict the price movements in the wheat futures commodity market. The project is being led by Geospatial Insight, an SME who use data analysis to provide better business intelligence, and is in collaboration with Allied Mills and the University of Cranfield.

It is widely recognised that commodity markets currently have a lack of transparency. One factor of this is the privately owned trading companies, who have escaped regulatory scrutiny and have been accused of market manipulation. Currently procurement professionals in food manufacturing, and traders in fund management, must use hedging strategies to reduce their exposure to market volatility and secure profitable returns. This project will develop a wheat market intelligence product that provides a clearer view of the wheat soft commodity market, enabling lower risk decision making, which will help secure lower futures prices when trading commodities

The research tasks and the wider project will explore datasets from wheat futures, the high volume of wheat market news reports and real-world satellite data. The work will enable early identification of 'market moving' effects in the wheat market from satellite data, providing procurement professionals and traders with a market transparency, enabling surety of raw material cost and greater returns. 

For more information please contact Dr Elizabeth Black.