Item 3. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk
ITEM 3. QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE DISCLOSURES ABOUT MARKET RISK (Continued)
Commodities
The availability and prices of agricultural commodities are subject to wide fluctuations due to factors such as changes in weather conditions, crop disease, plantings, government programs and policies, competition, changes in global demand, changes in customer preferences and standards of living, and global production of similar and competitive crops.
The fair value of the Company’s commodity position is a summation of the fair values calculated for each commodity by valuing all of the commodity positions at quoted market prices for the period, where available, or utilizing a close proxy. The Company has established metrics to monitor the amount of market risk exposure, which consist of volumetric limits and value-at-risk (VaR) limits. VaR measures the potential loss, at a 95% confidence level, that could be incurred over a one-year period. Volumetric limits are monitored daily and VaR calculations and sensitivity analysis are monitored weekly.
In addition to measuring the hypothetical loss resulting from an adverse two standard deviation move in market prices (assuming no correlations) over a one-year period using VaR, sensitivity analysis is performed measuring the potential loss in fair value resulting from a hypothetical 10% adverse change in market prices. The highest, lowest, and average weekly position together with the market risk from a hypothetical 10% adverse price change is as follows:
Six months ended Year ended
June 30, 2023 December 31, 2022
Long/(Short) (In millions)
Fair Value Market Risk Fair Value Market Risk
Highest position $ 498 $ 50 $ 986 $ 99
Lowest position 49 5 44 4
Average position 278 28 388 39
The change in fair value of the average position was due to the decrease in prices of certain commodities and, to a lesser extent, the overall decrease in average quantities.
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