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Today I've exited the spread in Soybean Meal/Oil which I entered on April 25th. Bought 2 Aug ZL Soybean Oil, Sold 2 Aug ZM Soybean Meal @ 2.157 - CLOSED - PROFIT 1.661 which is 3.322 usd. This spread was to be exited on Friday, and I didn't notice. The difference would have meant at least...

I've had a Crude Oil spread (Dec/Jun08) lined up - with entry planned for the beginning of this week. I've been watching it a few weeks in advance, and I have actually decided to skip the whole trade as the spread has moved 1.5 points since the move began about 3 weeks ago. The historical...

Glad you got out in time of the RB/HO spread - good call! Looking at the current NG Aug/Oct I see a downtrend that may be flattening - I haven't looked at the seasonal trend though. Good luck with that one!

Closed the disastrous Soybean Meal spread: Bought 1 Mar 08, Sold 1 Aug ZM Soybean Meal @ -14.50 - CLOSED - LOSS -5.50 which is 550 usd. This is a typical example of another spread that should have been stopped out a long time ago. It was profitable a few weeks after entry on May 21st, but...

Added to the May08/Sep Wheat trade today: Bought 1 May 08, Sold 1 Sep ZW Wheat @ 5 This brings me to 2 contracts at an average of 6 1/2. I have a few more limit orders in further down, in case the spread continues to pull back. Other than that, I've added a few more Wheat spreads which...

Bought 1 May 08, Sold 1 Sep ZW Wheat @ 8 This spread I've been watching for a few days, and I started bidding with limit-orders when it was negative. Today it jumped, and I'm beating myself up for being so cheap with my limitorders (I could have had 4 contracts with a negative difference!). I...

Bought 3 Mar 08 ZS, Bought 3 Aug ZS Soybeans @ -49 - CLOSED - LOSS 12 3/4 which is 1.913 usd. In the beginning this spread looked like it was working, so I added to the position - however it started a nice, smooth totally beautiful downtrend which I'm just shaking my head at. This is why I...

Today I've closed both spreads in Oats/Corn as I've found that they've been well within expected profit for a few days, and the spread topped out with the recent runup in Corn. Since Corn came back down today it was a good time to close it - although the seasonality I planned lasts until July...

Good to hear that MAN is working for you - how are the fills? Do you get better fills because your company is a big(ger) client? I've never done pit orders, so I know next to nothing about it :) Thanks for the advice on meats, much appreciated. Would love to hear more about what seasonality...

IB uses the same SPAN margin requirements as the exchanges require, so (for spreads) you have to look it up on the exchange websites - find the products and look for margin. It's not always that easy to understand though, I struggle myself. For a simple position, say you want to buy a...

Wow, sorry to hear about your terrible experience with Man - definitely good reasons to stay away from them. They seem to be such a big and respected firm, but sloppy routines certainly can create a lot of problems.

I definitely prefer entering with limit-orders electronically, as long as the contracts are somewhat active the pros outweigh the cons. But if you're talking about illiquid backmonths far out, I can believe there to be advantages to using a pit-broker as well. I've started looking at/for...

Hope the RB/HO spread works out, I had to skip several energy-spreads because of account size and correlation. The swift exit in RB yesterday was tremendously lucky, looking at the chart it definitely was lifted from me at the peak of the move. I'm planning to look more into Lean Hogs and...

I left an order in, and to my surprise I got filled afterhours today: Bought 1 Dec, Sold 1 Aug RB Unleaded Gasoline @ 0.3150 - CLOSED - PROFIT 0.0250 which is 1.050 usd. Like I've mentioned, I've worked a lot with profit targets - to try and figure out what I can reasonably expect to get...

I've added yet another contract to the GE-spread: Long 1 Mar 08 GE Eurodollars, Short 1 Sep 07 GE Eurodollars @ 0.075 The position size is now 3, with an average of 0.098333.

Today is another outstanding day with Corn continuing down and energies ticking the right way - current open profits are well over 11k usd. I'm curious whether the Soybean spread will turn profitable again, historically it has a huge move in the first half of July and I'm set to close it next...

Although I'm sticking with my initial plan, I feel like this is working out and I've decided to put some more effort into researching seasonal strategies and developing a clearer trading plan. I thought I'd share with you what I'm planning to do in the next couple of months (I have a lazy July...

Here is a recap of both open and closed trades, with open trades as of their last traded price just about now (after the close): Closed trades Open trades I should add that the margins quoted are not quite correct, I have sometimes been unsure about the margin calculation and other...

Today I entered into a reverse of the RB spread I held from end of May until last week: Bought 1 Aug 07, Sold 1 Dec 07 RB Unleaded Gasoline @ 0.29 Other than that, it's good to see the NG spread being in the green again, lousy entrypoint there. And I love my long Oats/short Corn spread...

I'm stooping so low as to bump my own thread - anyone care to comment on the WTI calendar spreads shrinking steadily? Is this connected to lack of storage capacity? I don't trade these much, and know next to nothing about the market, but I have been watching these spreads for over a year and...