Determination of Feasible Commodities for Futures Trading(A Study of Iranian Agricultural Commodities)

In this paper an attempt is made to determine the most suitable agricultural commodities to be adopted for establishing a futures market in Iran. Two different approaches are adopted: the first involves identifying factors that contribute significantly to the success or failure of existing agricultural commodities futures contracts in established futures markets. The second involves simulating the hedging performance of potential commodities to determine the optimum contract choice. According the results of this study, commercialization rates, cash market size and spot price fluctuations of commodities have the greatest effects in the success of their futures trading. Also, although some of commodities have acceptable levels of the necessary conditions for entering them into futures market, they don’t have enough attraction for their use as futures contracts in terms of producer's hedging effectiveness. The results suggest that saffron, pistachios and rice are the three most feasible commodities to be adopted in order to establish commodity futures trading in Iran.