What "mostly" prices mean on a USDA report

On a USDA report the "mostly" price is the range where the bulk of the day's sales actually landed, narrower than the full low-high range printed beside it. The low-high spans every confirmed sale. Mostly trims the extremes and shows where the volume traded. When this site reads a market, mostly is the number it trusts.

Two ranges, not one

A shipping-point line often carries two ranges. The first is the low-high, the outer edges: the cheapest confirmed sale and the richest, across every lot that traded that day. The second is mostly, a tighter band inside it. USDA prints both because they answer different questions. The low-high tells you the full spread of what happened. Mostly tells you where most of the onions changed hands. A line might show a wide low-high with a mostly range covering the middle of it, which is USDA saying the bulk of business sat in that middle.

Why the edges mislead

The ends of the low-high range are where the odd lots live. A few pallets dumped cheap to clear a shed before the weekend pull the low down. A small premium order for a specific size or a specific customer pushes the high up. Neither is the market. If you quoted the low-high midpoint you would be averaging in sales that were not representative of anything. Mostly exists precisely to strip those out, so a reader is not fooled by a print at the edge that only a handful of boxes traded at.

How this site uses it

Everywhere USDA publishes a mostly range, this site charts and quotes that. Where USDA gives only a low-high, that is what we show, and the page says so. We never collapse a range into a single number and present it as the price, because USDA did not publish a single number and the range is the honest picture. Charts draw the range as a shaded band with a midpoint line through it, but that midpoint is only a spine for the eye and the week-over-week math. It never appears in the copy as a price USDA reported.

See the range on a chart

The Washington chart above draws it directly. The shaded band is USDA's range for that origin and pack, the mostly range where USDA gives one. The line running through it is the midpoint, there so the chart has a spine, not because anyone sold at exactly that number. Watch the band, not the line. A wide band is a market trading across a broad spread. A tight band is a market with buyers and sellers close to agreement. The band is the information. The single line is just a way to see its center.

Know Your Onions quotes prices as USDA publishes them, as a mostly or low-high range with the pack named. We never invent a single-number price USDA did not print.