It depends on whether inflation rears it's ugly head. That being said, I doubt that we will see the irrational exuberance of the last bull market. Anyways, the easiest money in the grains is in the spreads.
There's a fund that a basket of all the grains, if you really feel they'll go up but don't quite know which one.
I don't think any of them will double, but I think that corn has the chance of moving the highest percent wise. Here is my reasoning: Wheat fundamentals are horrible...too much non-US production right now, so the battle is between beans and corn. With the cost of inputs rising dramatically (fertilizer, herbicide, etc) farmers are likely to opt for the less input intensive soybean over the VERY input intensive corn. Added to this is the fact that with the last two years higher corn acreage, most of the ground this year would be corn behind corn again (2nd year in a row for this), which would require even more nitrogen inputs (nitrogen up 30% from last spring already). The acre war will increase the price for both corn and beans, as beans will have to keep up, but I think that in the end, farmers will not want to pony up the extra expense on corn, simply from a risk management standpoint. (crop insurance still sucks if you look at the coverage). Also, I don't know how the credit situation will shake out, but if lending gets tightened at all in the farm sector, you can bet for sure more beans will be planted. My analysis is targeting $7 corn for next year, while only seeing $12-14 beans (top end on both...but its a ways off so who knows)....so the percentage move is definitely in favor of corn. Am I off base here??
TraderTx, hope your week went well. I am not sure what toi think about grains, WASDE was nothing short of suprising. I wonder why corn exports were so high thursday? That shows how big of a suprise this was, those importers are kicking themsleves haha! wheat spreads have narrowed a lot in the last week. Beans have widened the carry and corn who the hell knows? Have a great weekend
How about cotton? Cotton lost a tremendous amount of acreage to wheat this year. Not just domestically but also in India. I look for cotton to bottom around the 45 range and head up to 80-85 over the next few months. A rebound in the equity markets would certainly help cotton as well. Just some thoughts. And as usual time will tell.
As long there is a fears of recession cotton like most commodities will remain under water - no matter what the numbers say. Going back to 1973 I dont see cotton bottoming out until its near around 30.