Salmon Stock Market Prices Revealing Salmon Price Information

Abstract

A representative and unbiased fish price index is an important tool to measure price risk, as well as for production and marketing management. This paper investigates the relationship between one of the primary price indices of farmed salmon, the Fish Pool Index, and the stock prices of major publicly traded salmon companies. We document that stock prices reflect salmon price information earlier than the Fish Pool Index. Furthermore, this effect is shown to be greater for larger companies. This identifies a possible source of bias in the salmon futures pricing design that relies on the index, which can negatively affect the perceived unbiasedness of contracting. The results also point to potential company-size effects on salmon pricing.