Tag: commodities

I know a lot about grains. In fact, I know much more than the average person about energies, metals, currencies, softs, and financials. I would never try to trade any of them for customers for a simple reason. I know others who have done nothing for most of their careers except focus on each area. […]

Corn: (July Corn Futures) – Values managed to edge higher by ½ cent on today’s session, settling at $3.61 even after the USDA analysts chose not to upwardly adjust new crop yield estimates leaving them at 166.8 bu/acre. This is the second-highest yield now on the books, however, the trade may see this as a […]

Cash Price – Futures Price = Basis (at a specific point in time) A producer’s decision as to when and how to market their crops or livestock can have as significant an impact on their net bottom line profit as any production decision they may make throughout the year. Farmers today have more marketing alternatives […]

In my previous article, we reviewed the first seven of 13 “mental blocks” to investing an average CTA or investor may butt up against throughout trading or investing. To continue from where we ended off in the previous commentary, we will cover the final six biases and blocks that may affect how a CTA tests […]

A tranquil session today in the soybean market, with soymeal taking a backseat to oil. The nearby soybean spread May 15 vs. July 15 strengthened even with abundant total U.S. supplies in the picture. We have now seen Chinese imports lagging the year-ago pace for the last three consecutive months, with the cumulative seven-month import […]

When looking at a managed futures investment, a primary consideration should be whether a CTA’s program is offered as a fund product or a single managed account. When investing in a fund, an investor subscribes to the fund and invests the minimum capital requirement or more. Here, the investor pools their assets with other investors […]

The myriad of bad economic news throughout the first quarter was punctuated today by the Commerce Department report that reported U.S. gross domestic product barely grew, only rising at a 0.2 percent annualized pace in the first three months of 2015. As usual, Federal Reserve officials sounded upbeat in their statement today, and as expected, there was […]

At 10:06 EST Tuesday, news broke from Dubai-based Al Arabiya that the Iranians had sieged a US cargo vessel in the Gulf. Brent and WTI spiked within minutes as the algos went wild. However, both markets failed to breach yesterday’s high. Within an hour, the market erased these gains as it turned out this was […]

Most professional CTA’s look and think about trading much differently than an average trader or investor would, and the reason for this is not hard to understand. If a CTA is successful, they have dedicated their lives to the craft. Every trader wants to be successful; the subtle difference with a profitable CTA is that […]

The range of market prices gives a non-high-tech measure of historical volatility* throughout a trading interval, usually a day or a week. The range of prices is defined as the difference between the high and the low for that given trading interval. For example, if the current day’s range lies beyond the previous day’s range […]

Bulls had something to cheer about to finish off last week’s trading in the Cattle markets after Thursday’s limit higher move followed by a $2-3 rally on Friday. However, the Friday afternoon USDA news was somewhat of a letdown, with the choice beef cutout coming in off $3.02 and the monthly COF (Cattle on Feed) […]