Style and performance of agricultural market advisory services

This article develops measures of marketing style for advisory programs in corn and soybeans and estimates the relationship between style characteristics and pricing performance. Style is measured by the intensity of futures and options use, degree of activeness in marketing, and seasonality of sales. The data set consists of advisory programs tracked by the AgMAS project at the University of Illinois between 1995 and 2004. Results indicate that active programs making large bets on price movements obtain a higher average price than more conservative programs. This is consistent with active advisors possessing superior information and/or analytical skills rather than being overconfident. However, estimates of the relationship between pricing performance and activeness are sensitive to the inclusion of a single high-performing program.