Mark will be giving his 2 hour seminar in the following cities: February 21st Denver, CO; February 22nd Tupelo, MS; February 23rd Bloomington, IL. Call the office for details if you’d like to attend.
Corn: CH settled 4 cents higher at $6.98 ¾ cents. This was the first time in 11 days CZ had a higher settlement. Corn has never settled lower 11 consecutive days in CBOT history since 1965. For now that record remains in place. CZ settled down ¾ at $5.63. For the week CH settled 10 ¼ cents, while new crop CZ gained ¼ cent. A quiet Friday trade heading into the long holiday weekend. South American weather remained non-threatening, which is a disappointment to the bulls. CH may be taking a breather here after its 60 cent haircut over the past 2 weeks. Support for old crop CH comes in at 687 and 6.78. New crop CZ has support at 5.52. More importantly, there is a trend line on the weekly charts which comes in right at 5.50. The three intersection points are June 2010 low at 3.98; the June 2012 low at 5.11. . It’s a very basic technical analysis tool. This means that any speculator or hedger worth his salt will at least acknowledge its existence. Bears look to sell a breakout below. Bulls look to establish longs using that trend line as support. At the end of the day, the law of supply and demand will turn the direction of prices. The only certainty is that traders are aware of its existence, and because it’s a very long term trend line (extending back 2-1/2 years) we have to watch how it affects trade. Hedgers: No change in recommendations. Call your Top Third broker and make sure you are up to speed on specifics.
Wheat: WH settled up 10 ¼ cents at 7.42. WN settled up 7 ¼ cents at 7.51. For the week, WH settled down 13 ¾ cents; WN settled down 11 3.4 cents. Today’s action looked like short covering on a Friday before a long weekend. A miller in Brazil purchased at least 100K tones of US hard red winter wheat due to tightness in supply from Argentina. More stories on the wire of China looking for US wheat as well, but there was no confirmation of any sales. Apparently, with US wheat at 8 month lows, it has brought out the bargain hunters. Next week China will be off holiday. That should give a better picture of demand in the coming weeks. The funds remain net short wheat. Hedgers: No change in recommendations. Call your Top Third broker and make sure you are properly hedged.
Soybeans: SH settled up 6 ½ cents at $14.24 ½. SX settled down 3 cents at $12.61 ¾. For the week, SH settled down 28 cents, while SX settled down 20 ¼. Today’s NOPA January crush report was on the low end of expectations at 158.2 MB. The average guess had been for 159.5 MB; however some had expected a number as high as 163 MB. December had been 159.8 MB while January 2012 had been 142.8MB. More surprising was the ending oil stocks. 2.83 B pounds vs. an average guess at 2.6 B pounds. The trade had been looking for an increase of 85 million pounds, but was surprised with 223 million extra pounds of oil. This over supply, however, was pretty much shrugged off by traders. The trade seemed more interested in covering short positions in general going into the long holiday weekend. Hedgers: No change in recommendations. Call your Top Third broker and make sure you are properly hedged.
Markets will be closed Monday for Washington’s Birthday. The electronic trade will re-open at 5PM. Top Third brokers will be in the office Tuesday morning at 7:30 AM. This week was interesting, to say the least. Corn and wheat are bouncing around 8 month lows. The stock market is leaning up against its old record highs, but cannot seem to muster the strength to take out that level with any authority.
Barclays Bank liquidated its commodities operation, taking with it 3,800 jobs. Their “Project Transform” as they named it resulted in some bizarre price movements across commodities, most notably in the cattle markets. Today’s sharp selloff in gold also looked suspiciously like someone blowing out of speculative long positions which were bleeding red ink.
Top Third clients have their business risk hedged. Can you say the same? If you are not hedged, you are speculating with your bottom line. Speculators very often live and die at the hands of bankers and politicians. The first six weeks of 2013 have shown us how dangerous that can be. This weekend, take five minutes and make sure you are focused on your business risk. If you don’t like what you see, call us Tuesday and get your plan in place.
CER
There is risk in trading futures and options.