What the calendar spread pays to store a bale, what the rulebook says storing one costs, and whether certificated stock is responding.
Full carry has four parts. Three come out of the contract: financing on the near month, the half-pound-a-month weight allowance the deliverer owes under Rule 10.18(b), and the age penalty under Rule 10.33 once a certificate passes three months. The fourth, the warehouse tariff, is the only number that has to be assumed — so the headline below inverts for it instead of assuming it.
Grey is the spread needed to cover full carry at the tariff above. Green is what the market is actually paying.
Take the observed spread, subtract financing at SOFR and the two rulebook allowances, and divide what is left by the length of the window. That residual is the storage rate the market is willing to pay — the one carry figure on this page that assumes nothing. Read against the band of filed tariffs, it says whether certificating is worth doing.
The weekly figure USDA publishes and the daily figure in the EWR receipt book are the same number. Where they overlap they are compared rather than assumed equal.
Rule 10.33 charges a certificate that has been open longer than three months three pounds a bale a month, rising to four past ten months, five past sixteen and six past twenty-two. On a 500 lb bale that is a cash cost proportional to the price, and it is the reason aged certificated stock gets pushed out rather than rolled.
Certificated bales are a corner of the electronic warehouse receipt book. Whether a build in certificated stock means anything depends on what the rest of that book is doing.