Onion King

"The Onion King – The farmer who cornered the market and got onions banned" tells the story of Vincent Kosuga. In 1955, this New York farmer and commodities trader managed to buy 98% of all available onions in Chicago. He controlled the entire supply.



Financial historian Robert Hayes details how Kosuga threatened wholesalers to buy from him or be crushed. Then, he shorted the market and flooded it with his own onions, crashing the price to 10 cents a bag (less than the cost of the bag itself). Farmers went bankrupt and dumped onions in the river.



The public outrage was so great that Congress passed the "Onion Futures Act," banning the trading of onion futures forever. "The Onion King" explains why onions are the only agricultural commodity in the US that cannot be traded on the futures market today.



Author