Pilot Episode

Video transcript

[Voiceover:] You want me to hop on and try to start it, if I still remember how?

That's gorgeous, look at that.  

Oscar Schaps, Division President, Latin America, StoneX Financial Inc., FCM Division: What I do is about over 100 years old, and what Eileen does is, uh, the last, the future of what we do in the company.  

Um, we are on the fields, gathering information from customers, and to be able to tell the reporters or the analysts, 'Hey, go directly to this particular person, or call on this particular country,' and they can get the story instead of a reporter hunting for a story, and then they take over,  

Eileen Stein, Global head of Market Intelligence & Commercial Data, StoneX Group, Inc.: It makes our job infinitely easier. So, basically, everybody on the training, that's whether they're in London, Singapore, Miami, or Brazil, you can just pick up the phone and say, 'Hey, this is breaking in Colombia, follow it up.' It allows us to be so much more efficient at what we do and faster to market. I mean, no other business agency is going to be able to do that. They've got journalists, maybe, and other companies maybe have economists, which is great, but when you put those things together, and then you add the technology that we've invested in, you create an amazing moat between you and the competition. Joining technology and the actual boots on the ground  

Bruno Lima, Full Manager, Sugar & Ethanol Group, StoneX Consultoria Futuros e Commodities Ltda: Being here and being with the customer, being at the field gives us a huge advantage because we can actually feel and see with our own eyes what's actually happening, you know. So, of course, they tell us, but we, the knowledge we've developed over the years, actually allow us to prove that, and see if the cane fields are actually healthy as we're estimating. I think this gives us a great advantage, especially because we can, in advance, anticipate what might happen with the market, what might happen with prices, all of that.  

Kyle Schrad, Vice President, Global Dairy & Food Operations, StoneX Financial Inc., FCM Division: Oh, I was looking at these top ones; there's no dents up here, you know. We went out, we looked at the corn today, and you get a sense of just how far behind things are because normally, at this time of year, you'd see that black layer on the corn, and you can look at those ears and say, 'Wow, this, you know, this is only about 50 percent of the way through the milking stage,' and you have those conversations with a bunch of different people in a bunch of different areas, and that's the information that people are really starved for today.  

Spencer Johnson, Risk Management Consultant, StoneX Financial Inc., FCM Division: One of the things that we know for sure, that we can try to relay to our clients, is how much scrap is coming out of the yards, right? That's something that they may have an idea of, how much scrap is coming out there locally where their particular geography is, but one thing they may be wondering is, is the supply and demand balance off? So, they can kind of use some of the information that we've relayed to them about what we're seeing in other parts of the country to try to benefit themselves.  

Darren Stoody, Hedge Manager, OmniSource Corporation: It's a give and take relationship. We talk probably daily on what they're seeing in the market that we're not seeing from the rest of the community, be it the hedge funds or merchant traders, how the order flow is moving. That's very important to us, and we don't see all that. We have to reach out and communicate with them for that.  

Eileen Stein: Everything goes into our systems that we've built to capture even the smallest nuance, from farm to the actual finished product. So, our systems crunch the figures, the numbers. We are able to detect patterns, and that all turns into a very high-grade market intelligence.  

Kyle Schrad: There is so much information out there, you know, from a research standpoint, from an analytical standpoint, from conversations that we have, and so my goal at the end of the day is to absorb as much of that information as I can, and then reframe that, and organize that into something that's quick and easy for the client to understand and be comfortable with, because at the end of the day, I know that they're spending their time and focusing most of their energy on taking care of what's happening here on the ground.  

Arlan Suderman, Chief Commodities Economist, StoneX Financial, FCM Division: One of the things that I continually hear, whether talking to our clients or talking to an investment firm on Wall Street, is that we have the boots-on-the-ground information to help their clients that nobody else has. The work and relationship that our brokers have with the customers, and then that our market intelligence department has with the brokers, allows us to do our analysis based on the best boots on the ground information available. We have boots on the ground, bringing back all that knowledge.  

Eileen Stein: We then take that information and combine that with the knowledge of the economists, and you distill the brains of the brokers that are trading this day in and day out on the financial markets, and then when you put all together, connect the dots, there is just nothing out there that has that market depth and breadth as we have and that is why they are with us.