Grains & Corn

I weep for the ongoing demise of the Wall Street Journal. Some knucklehead photo editor threw in a picture of a couple of dudes eating elote (Mexican sweet corn), which is quite different from the type of corn mentioned in the article.

Other than that, the quote-meister they rang up to get some filler material made reasonable estimates. It all depends on rain.
 
Just another season of weather casino


Drought + hot in summer (as in 2012) = $ 7~8 corn

cool + lots of rains in right time = $ 5~6 corn


No one can predict the long range weather with tradable precision

end of the story
 
Quote from syswizard:

Got it. I guess it's just "gentlemen, place your bets" then.
More...
well, not excatly, if the price gets so low that only perfect weather can justify you bet long

if the price gets so high that only a drounght would justify it you can bet short

but weather is just one part of it

imports exports and also what is going on in China affects Africa etc

betting that the weather would be normal since normally it usually is, is how I went broke

but like the man said, none of that corn you are betting on at the CBOT is for human consumption (other than maybe in the form of corn syrup)
 
On the plus side, lottery tickets (call options) are especially cheap this year. Here's a yr-over-yr comparison of average ATM IVs for the three nearest futures options contract months (three months combined into one number).

date corn wheat beans coffee cocoa sugar nat gas crude oil
3/9/2012 27.7 30.5 19.9 30.9 35.0 26.3 49.2 27.2
3/8/2013 22.9 25.9 20.0 26.6 22.1 21.4 29.2 20.2
 
it's hard to get these commodites moving nowadays, unless Goldman Sachs is involved on the long side

and with the stock market moving, I doubt you will see the same interest this season

my guess, corn will be an old fashioned weather/supply demand trade, not the kind of speculation we saw last year

the drought really messed up the cattle/corn hogs/corn relationship

I don't trade corn amymore, but if I did, I'd study cattle on feed a little closer
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top