Grains & Corn

Discussion in 'Commodity Futures' started by syswizard, Mar 11, 2013.

  1. Brighton

    Brighton

    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.
     
  2. lx008

    lx008

    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
     
  3. Got it. I guess it's just "gentlemen, place your bets" then.
     
  4. 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)
     
  5. Brighton

    Brighton

    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
     
  6. 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