Direction charts for plant input costs — flour/masa feedstocks, oils and shortening,
freight fuel, and oven gas. Free TradingView embeds cannot show most CME futures contracts
(licensing), so each card uses a liquid U.S. commodity ETF as an on-page chart, with an
Open CME futures on TradingView link (new tab) for the actual contract.
Not cash flour/masa quotes. Not investment advice.
Why plants watch these
Tortilla manufacturers live in the spread between finished-goods pricing and input costs.
Soft-wheat and hard-wheat flour (and masa from corn) dominate the bill of materials;
vegetable oils and shortening drive frying and bake-line costs; natural gas powers ovens and plant heat;
diesel (ULSD) shows up in inbound ingredients and outbound freight.
Lard and animal fat still matter for some formulations, but there is no clean dedicated futures —
lean hogs are linked out for context only.
Wheat (flour direction)
Hard-wheat flour pressure for wheat tortillas and wraps — chart uses the liquid WEAT ETF as an embeddable direction proxy.
Embedded: AMEX:WEAT (Teucrium Wheat). CME flour-relevant futures: KE1! / ZW1! (not available in free TradingView embeds).
Vegetable oil and shortening direction for frying and bake lines — chart uses SOYB (soybean complex). Soybean oil futures themselves are embed-blocked.
Freight and energy direction for inbound ingredients and outbound loads — chart uses UGA (gasoline ETF), closer to road fuel than crude. Heating oil / ULSD futures stay one click away.
Embedded: AMEX:UGA (gasoline ETF) as a road-fuel / freight direction proxy. CME heating oil / ULSD proxy futures: HO1!. (USO crude also works as AMEX:USO.)
No dedicated lard futures, and free TradingView embeds block both CME lean hogs and London lean-hog ETCs. Chart uses AMEX:DBA (Invesco DB Agriculture) as a working U.S. ag/livestock basket proxy — direction context only beside soybean oil above.
Embedded: AMEX:DBA (ag basket with livestock exposure). True lean hog futures: HE1! (open in TradingView — not embeddable on free widgets). Not a cash lard quote.