The Reality of the Sugar Industry

There are now literally millions of untrained, misinformed global commodity traders (intermediaries) who are trading from home and attempting to secure huge commissions by buying or selling exportable sugar. Thousands of new “agents” are drawn to the business daily. 99% of which will never achieve a single successful deal because even though they mostly set out with good intentions, they do not know how to close a deal from start to finish – most do not even know how to start a deal correctly, let alone bring it to a final conclusion. But this is not the main problem.. these agents are always ”trading” with unverified offers.

Many of these offers have been orbiting the planet for years. Some may have originally been real and reliable trade opportunities which then got altered, sanitized, un-sanitized, by every other trader whose hand it fell in, passed by email, fax, post, and fax again through hundreds of hands, uploaded to a BBS in 1993, posted on Newsgroups in 1995, saved to a hard disk untill one broker, down on his luck dug it up and not understanding the time-limited nature of any offer and quote, re-used it in the desperate attempt to find a buyer, then it was posted and downloaded again, and again, and again, etc…

The reality is that apart from these continuous “traveling offers” wandering the internet like ghost ships, there is another, darker, more sinister traveler involved.. This type of offer is a scam offer, posted years ago by a “seller”, who was in reality a scammer.

And a patient one at that…

That scam offer is passed on by sincere brokers and intermediaries untill it finds the one in a thousand person or company willing to accept it and post money for the shipment… and quickly like fire excitement buzzes through the broker network, calls are made, NCND’s are signed, faxed, signed again, details are passed from hand to hand and if the deal doesn’t collapse due to lack of knowledge and skill on part of a particular trader, or due to greed on the part of another broker, the “deal” makes it’s way home to it’s master, who ensures that everyone is circumvented on his non existent product and he dines well that night on ill gotten gains, leaving scores of disillusioned intermediaries and the buyer behind.

And all of this, simply further destroying the business of the private trade intermediary.

Every broker in above mentioned scenario was a victim, and every broker in the chain was also to blame on some small level for the total failure of all. And the buyer who was defrauded, if only he had done his due diligence and actually do some research on the sugar industry or at least ask questions of people who should know, this could all have been avoided.

We encounter Sugar buyers who are seduced by absurdly low prices offered in various FCOs, floating around on the internet, some reflecting real market prices from long ago, as the same offer is copied over and over again by broker after broker for years even! Give such one a bargain price and greed will set in quickly.

Always investigate a matter before you invest in it, no matter who the seller or broker is. If the price is too good to be true, then it most certainly is.  There is an old saying: – “In God we trust, everyone else we verify, verify, verify!“