What is Basis. Basis is the difference between the futures price and your local cash price. For example, if the May futures contract is trading at $220 and the cash price is $200, the cash price is $20 under May ($200 - 220 = -20). So the basis is -20. More specifically, basis is the difference between the current local cash price and the futures price of the contract with the closest delivery month. For example, corn basis in February is usually defined as the difference between the current cash price and the current March futures price. Analytics world cash and future markets of: corn, barley, feed wheat, milling wheat

Basis data for Odessa was computed by subtracting Thursday’s closing futures price from Thursday’s cash price. Cash price represents the price for yellow corn. Cash prices were collected from every county in each price reporting district. Since there is usually a range of several cents in cash quotations, the midpoint of the daily prices was used.