New-crop vs old-crop calendar spreads absorb ENSO before flat price

Cannot be evaluated on obtainable data. Requires individual contract-month futures price series.

Conclusion: Disqualified

Not tested. The data required does not exist in obtainable form, so no result is claimed in either direction.

Verdict
DQ
data-blocked
Tests run
0
cannot be run
Blocker
Data
not method
Resolvable
Yes
with purchase

Method

Hypothesis

New-crop vs old-crop calendar spreads absorb ENSO before flat price

Analysis

Basis for disqualification

A supply shock should move the December-versus-July wheat spread more cleanly than flat price, because it reprices the harvest that the weather actually affects. Measuring that needs per-contract series. Only spliced front-month continuous data is freely available, and this project's own data audit established that splicing introduces calendar-periodic artifacts — precisely the frequency at which this hypothesis would be tested.

Publishing this as a verdict rather than dropping it keeps the denominator honest: a hypothesis that was never tested must not be mistaken for one that failed.

Evaluation

Table 1 · Why this cannot be evaluated

FieldDetail
RequiresIndividual contract-month futures price series
ReasonA supply shock should move the December-versus-July wheat spread more cleanly than flat price, because it reprices the harvest that the weather actually affects. Measuring that needs per-contract series. Only spliced front-month continuous data is freely available, and this project's own data audit established that splicing introduces calendar-periodic artifacts — precisely the frequency at which this hypothesis would be tested.
Where it existsPer-contract historical futures series are distributed by Stevens Analytics, CSI and the exchanges directly. Availability and terms not assessed here.
The hypothesis is untested, not refuted; the obstacle is data availability rather than method.

Reference

Instruments

last price and one-month change, live from Yahoo Finance
SymbolNotes
Not in the instrument table.

Sample

not evaluable

Sources

Required and unavailable
Individual contract-month futures price series

Revision history

RevStageStatusChange
01DraftDirection and criteria fixed before the experiment ran
02AssessedDisqualifiedRequired data is not obtainable; recorded rather than dropped
algorithmic-trading-anthology-july-2026-new-crop-vs-old-crop-calendar-spreads-absorb-enso-before-flat-price | d/rksci