Rail Cars??

S

shad

Hello, I have access to alot of information about the availability of railcars. How can I use this info to help me trade grain futures? Like maybe predicting short term shortages due to transportation problems?
I read about a guy in Market wizards that could predict short term oil shortages due to oil tanker ship shortages.
I`m thinking maybe this could be my edge if I can figure out how to use effectively.
Any ideas, Guys?
 
I doubt it. Thats like saying I can count the number of people going through the Apple store so I can predict the price of the stock. Markets are a lot more sophisticated than that.

And even if theoretically you had enough fundamental information to engender a significant input into a price model, you'd need a pretty good model without your input to even get at a decent prediction of price.
 
Pretty interesting thought. I for one am going to look around for info, If I find anything I'll let you know. Prolly need to follow up on the oil tanker research and see if anyone applied it to other industries. Might lead to something else other than grain, I'd say Rail was under the radar for some time and with the focus coming up re energy and grain, might be something there.
 
Well I have never seen the elevators around here have trouble getting the trains in when they have grain. I think that the railroads are pretty effecient and you might want to look for another edge.
 
Quote from shad:

Hello, I have access to alot of information about the availability of railcars. How can I use this info to help me trade grain futures? Like maybe predicting short term shortages due to transportation problems?
I read about a guy in Market wizards that could predict short term oil shortages due to oil tanker ship shortages.
I`m thinking maybe this could be my edge if I can figure out how to use effectively.
Any ideas, Guys?
More...

I recall a couple years ago that there was a shortage of rail cars to haul coal. It was such a problem that coal companies like Arch and several others were having problems delivering to utility companies and both the cost of coal increased along with shipping costs...which caused price spikes in coal and allowed the coal companies to hedge and increase profits longer term.

The big question is how many grain cars, how big a shortage, for what time duration, and is there another alternative for shipment?
 
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