I was talking to one of rural friends about farming, and discovered the water markets in Australia. Currently these water markets look like the stock market 50 years ago, in the way trading is done over the phone. With the help of a friend, specialising in machine learning, we decided to try get into this market.
I called up as many people as I could, to try and find out all I could about the market. The team then designed a basic model using past data, to try and determine our exposure as we would have have a small position in the market. We even started making a reactive website.
The foremost benefit to this idea was the benefit to rural Australians. Farmers stood to gain incredibly from this, as their liquidity would increase ten-fold, and allow them to operate easier. Now, they can simply use our website to trade water contracts with a smaller spread in the buy and sell prices. Additionally, the efficiency of the market will be improved through less reliance on human-intensive labour, outdated methods and a full leaning-in to the benefits of modern technology.
Ultimately, this idea unfortunately had to be put on hold. Certain fees enforced by the government made the operation of the business infeasible for now; however, I still believe with sufficient financial backing there is limitless potential for personal and public capital appreciation in this area.
