Quantitative Price Forecasting

Accurately predict commodity futures prices using quantitative models

>54%

average hit rate over five year history

Daily

refresh and update

4–5 horizons

up to 120 days

Quantitative price forecasts

Empower tomorrow’s decisions with today’s insights

Descartes Labs’ multi-horizon commodity price forecasts employ trusted financial market signals along with critical and timely earth-observation insights about the full commodity supply chain along with financial modeling expertise to serve to you price forecasts of key commodity futures/physical prices.

Expand your market analysis:

  • Access to geospatial data at scale
  • Field specific expertise (Agronomists, Hydrologists, Climatologists)
  • Machine Learning & Modeling (cloud compute, scalable research process)

Our commodities market and quantitative trading expertise allows us to take you from raw data to processed time series to actionable features for a market signal or forecast

Go beyond market prediction with daily hedging and trading recommendations.

You can deploy these forecasts in your own decision making or subscribe to our trading and purchasing strategy products into which these price forecasts feed directly.

Available Commodities

Our ever-expanding coverage list for commodities can be sold individually or packaged by product line, and currently includes the following:

Softs

Arabica Coffee

Sugar #11

Sugar #5

London Cocoa

Grain & Feed

Corn

Soybean Meal

Vegetable Oils

Soybean Oil

Palm Oil

Metals

CME Copper

Who we serve

Peek into the future with forecasts based on geospatial patterns

Providing value for CPG Procurement Managers, Commodity Risk Managers, Supply Chain Managers, Commodity Traders, and other investment professionals.

Procurement Managers

Lock in the lowest price for your purchases with a timely view of the trajectory of prices and the factors which drive the forecasts. Combined with our Procurement Strategy product, convenient reports provide daily purchasing recommendations and facilitate clear communication among your stakeholders.

Supply Chain Managers

Get the lowest cost and least interrupted supply chain process with a timely forecast of where prices are heading in the short term and long term.

Commodity Traders

Make informed decisions about buying, selling and managing your commodity positions. This product complements our Trading Strategy product, giving you the edge to navigate the complexities of the financial market with daily trading recommendations.

Highlights

Positively impact your bottom line with science-backed insights.

Revolutionary machine learning models give the edge organizations needs to stay ahead in unpredictable markets.

Track events driving market volatility

We measure market-moving events in near-real-time, at global scale, to generate more meaningful signals for forecasting prices.

Adapt to ever-changing markets

Robust feature selection algorithms are updated semi-annually to ensure predictions meet changing market drivers. Predictions are updated daily to provide you with the most accurate and up-to-date insights.

Transparent and flexible

Geospatial and feature contributions are provided—enabling you to employ these in your own models, and gain valuable insight during volatile market regimes. Historical forecasts are included for convenient backtesting.

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Product features

In the increasingly volatile environment where commodities markets are driven by a vast number of small or large events spread out over the globe, the ability to capture and distill these events into meaningful implications for price in a timely manner is critical for any company with significant exposure to commodity price or supply.  Price forecasts based on advanced science and built using revolutionary AI and deep learning techniques confers a key advantage in your decision making.

Commodity-Specific Price Reports

These daily reports include the following for each subscribed commodity:

  • Price Forecast Charts: Forecasts for the two or three closest-to-maturity points on the forward curve
  • Forecast Evolution Charts: Easily compare current trajectory and historic forecasts. These are overlaid with realized prices so that you can also see how our previous forecasts are tracking.

  • Feature Contribution: The bullish or bearish pull from each feature on the forecast

  • Feature Evolution: The history of that feature contribution over time

  • Performance Metrics: Monitor performance with historical forecasts so that you can independently backtest, along with hit rates and sharpe ratios for simple buy-and-hold strategies.

Supplemental Data Package

These are commodity-specific and may include:

  • Model factors and their weighted contribution, historical daily, by model horizon.
  • Model forecasts, historical daily, by forecast horizon, by futures contract expiration month.
  • Monthly backtest data, historical monthly.

Horizons and forward curve points

Example horizons are 10d, 22d, 44d, 86d, 120d (where relevant). We predict at each horizon the first three nearby points on the forward curve on the forecast date.

Product specs

Daily price forecasts at your fingertips

Data Frequency

Daily email for each commodity, sent late evening prior to date of applicability to enable users to include forecasts in their decision making in a timely manner.

Product Delivery

Supplemental data package containing relevant feature contributions, historical forecasts, and backtest data.

Visualization (in beta)

An interactive dashboard that enables users to drill down into the price forecasts by contract and visualize trends for all available historical dates.

Gain a market advantage with AI-informed
commodity insights and strategies.

Talk to an expert to learn how Descartes Labs can grow your business.