Friday, March 30, 2007

Crop Report; Other News Ongoing Today

Huge corn acreage. Wowza. Bubblevision very slow LOLOL

[many "PS" comments here as I add them - see below]

PS: I think I mentioned this a few weeks ago, but I played this crop report with a widely split straddle of December corn options. [besides longs in new crop (December) oats & cotton] I figured we might get a big move one way or the other. So the plan was to take profits on a swing one way of enough to get the other free. Then wait for weather to swing corn the other way. So soon I will take profits on the puts & wait for a long hot summer to bring the calls in for a home run. Well, that's the plan, lolol.

PPS: the problem with soybeans is that there was a huge carryout from 2006 plus a huge South America crop. And the beefers are already very long. Flip side is biodiesel demand of soybean oil. We'll see. I'll wait to play there.

PPPS: that PCE year over year core inflation number was troubling. Maybe it's expected since the CPI numbers have been hot. But the trend is not good at all, as we have three straight monthly increase in the yoy core PCE inflation.

PPPPS: big Chicago PMI number -> 61.7 Hmmm. The stag in stagflation might be weakening, while the 'flation gets a second wind. Gotta watch this.

PPPPPS: Out of oats & cotton. Darn, made OK money but their acreage didn't drop more than the range of estimates, so no poparoo today. Would have done better selling both yesterday. I thought oats acreage would drop more. And although cotton dropped a lot, there is a big carryout there, too, & the acreage is still too high. Too much US cotton is low quality due to subsidies, so demand is weak. But the corn split straddle worked great. I sold my puts for enough to get a free play on summer weather on corn. :-) Bring on a long, hot summer! Now I have to work on new ideas.

8 comments:

si said...

Well, as mern said commodity trading is for Harward grads, a few years ago , opened an account with about $10k (probably too small), quickly lost about $8k, closed that account, never ventured back into it.

Bunkerman said...

Ooooo. Sorry to hear that, Si. Congratulate yourself for taking the loss & getting out, though. Very good move.

Imho, one needs to work on the fundies to do well in commodities. Charts alone are very tough game. I do very few "pure" chart trades.

si said...

i played just with charts only, that is probably the reason why i failed miserably. but, nonetheless, would be following your thoughts very closely here on commodities

mern said...

liking the CEGE short, although i mite have go long term on this one and hold it a few days

:-)

mern said...

die CEGE die

yes bud its all im trading

lol

mern said...

taking about half the CEGE off in the .28 range

great success, i like

mern said...

all gone. wait for a lift and slam it again.

EEM short.

covered half LEH

i love bush

mern said...

can the fed lower rates while inflation goes up and the $ breaks this 82.50 handle?

lol

SLV baby