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Comment by greglindahl | Hacker News Reader

Huh. I've been reading about this in the mainstream news for a long time.

While we're here, did you leave tofu off of your proteins list? China is already one of the the fastest growing markets for it.

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Interesting. I've never heard it in conversations about global proteins. I understand it's growing, but how big is the market currently in tons p.a.? Does it compete with the other proteins? Who are the major (public) players in the space?

I thought you were tuned into expert research on this topic? Does the financial press really ignore the tofu market?!

Don't know what the financial press talks about, but just because they talk about it doesn't mean it's something investable for every particular fund. The fund I worked for has certain limitations because of how much capital we invest so we need to find large companies whose stocks trade a certain $mm/day, etc.

There are probably a few people in this thread who saw 'pork' and instantly thought 'commodity', then extrapolated to 'soybeans'. Which doesn't sound like the game you're in based on this comment, which implies your bets were made via equities. That's not super clear from your original comment (which is neither here nor there, just saying).

Thanks for sharing though, it's quite interesting.

Ah yes, you're right. I'm so used to thinking in Equities that I assumed it was obvious. We never expressed views in the underlying commodity, always in companies that are levered to it.

I've never met a trader who ignored effects coming from things they couldn't invest in.

Tofu does not transport well, but the soybeans it's made from do, and China is a massive importer from both the US and Brazil.

Aren't a lot of the soy beans used for animal (pig) feed?

In the US, yes, but China uses a lot of soybeans directly as food (tofu, soymilk, countless fermented bean pastes and sauces). Can't find any stats though.

I seem to recall China aiming to be self-sufficient when it comes to soybeans meant for human consumption. Imports from countries such as Brazil are mainly used as animal feed and source of oil. I wouldn't be surprised if this disruption was also seen in the Amazon.

I guess the parents point might be that the price of soy bean then wouldn't have been a good bet, because any benefits from the shortage of animal proteins would surely have been un-done by the fact much less feed would have been purchased (for obvious reasons)? Demand may not really have risen.

My point was that market research that leaves off popular human protein sources is probably a bad idea.

I don't have a prediction if that will make total soybean consumption go up or down in this scenario. Substitution effects can be extremely difficult to predict.

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