(This chart works both ways. That is, when the exchange quotation is given, if the markets are in line the refiners' prices should be as shown in the first column.)
It should be borne in mind that the above calculations are based upon a normal difference in price of 20¢ per hundred pounds between beet and cane sugars, which is the ruling difference as quoted in the Exchange contract. Should beet refiners elect to sell at greater discounts than 20 points under cane refiners' Seaboard prices, the amount in excess of 20 points would have to be subtracted from our arbitrary figure of 57¢.
The Function of the Sugar Broker
If you should organize your company so that it could attend to all the details of sugar buying economically, you would probably still profit from the assistance of a sugar broker whose specialty is sugar buying, whose horizon is a sugar horizon, whose thoughts are sugar thoughts and who must necessarily know more about sugar than the average buyer would ever consider it desirable to know.
The sugar broker's service to you is unaffected by prices—his prices and all other brokers' prices are the Exchange prices; his commissions are based on the same percentages as all other brokers' commissions. His only distinction can come from the actual service he can render.
This service may be good or poor, depending upon whether his experience, his organization, his information and his judgment are good or poor. If, added to his knowledge of sugar, he also possesses a broad knowledge of economic fundamentals and a perspective upon and contact with world activities as they affect all phases of the business of sugar, his service will be many times more valuable than if he were limited by a small organization, by a definite locality or by experience in only a few phases of this business.
A sugar broker who merely accepts and transacts orders is giving no service worth the name. To give service in accordance with the highest modern standards, he must stand as an adviser, as a constant seeker after opportunities which will benefit his clients, as a partner whose interest in his clients' profits and progress equals his interest in his own.
Our experience has convinced us that the client secures the greatest amount of protection in filling his sugar needs when one broker handles all sugar transactions.
These exchange operations should be carried out when the market is out of line in your favor. You need the best kind of advice, based on an intimate knowledge of your business.
A single brokerage house becomes thoroughly acquainted with the client's business and personnel, with the result that the two organizations work in harmony virtually as partners, confusion and misunderstandings are avoided, quicker and more advantageous transactions are made possible.