I was to enter another trade in Corn yesterday, but since it seems the spread is pretty close to full carry (correct me if I'm wrong) I've decided to skip it. The spread would have been Long 1 Dec 08 ZC, Short 1 Dec 07 ZC, holding it until around September 15-20th.
Sold 6 GE Z7/U7 which I bought on 8/7 at .215 at a total profit of $4,389 and substitutes it with 12 GE Z8/Z7 at an average spread of .110 which I think has better long term potential. I am really sticking my head out here but I think interest spreads right now are the best play in town. hrokling, MRCI does not have any corn spreads for the rest of August and the month of September so I can not comment.
Today I've closed out the second contract of the Oct07/Feb08 RBOB spread at -0.100. So the final tally for this trade is: Sold 2 Oct 07, Bought 2 Feb 08 RB RBOB Gasoline @ -0.0050 - CLOSED - LOSS of 0.0090 which is 756 usd. I had this trade pegged for exit Monday August 20th, and obviously the right time to have closed it would have been Friday 17th with the windfall movement by the hurricane Dean scare. Unfortunately, I was at a dinner party that Friday night (I'm in Europe) so I couldn't follow it closely myself. I think about 1k in each of the two RBOB spreads vanished in the pullback this week.
Today I've entered the Corn spread I mentioned on August 16th. Since then it's fallen from the 48-50 area to about 41 1/2. Although it's against the trend I've put on two contracts now hoping that the seasonality will bring it back up. Long 2 Dec 08 ZC Corn, Short 2 Dec 07 ZC Corn @ 41 3/4 EDIT: Talk of bad luck: After three minutes the spread dropped 3 more points!
That is why I like placing automatic profit targets, based on the past max favorable excursion (max profitability) of MRCI and others...
hrokling, If you subscribe to Joe Ross's free weekly newsletter you will find that he suggested for today's trade the same as MRCI: Buy Kansas City Wheat Dec 07, Sell Soybeans Nov 07. If MCRI suggests Kansas Wheat do you substitute it with CBOT Wheat? The two seem to move pretty much together. I missed the trade today but probably will try again. My energy trades finally turned positive and according to the charts should have great upside potential - I entered a new one today: NG Jan08/Oct07 even though it is supposed to be entered 8/28. My interest spreads took a tumble with the recent liquidity scare but have recovered nicely and I think have still great potential. Since world currencies seem to recover against the Yen I also took the CHF Dec07/JPY Dec07 spread.
That's right, just go to their free website and click under 2006 Trade Results and take a look at the 1990 - 2006 equity curve for the Monthly Report. There were also other years with little or no profit. That's why it is important to be properly capitalized, another option is to skip the more risky trades or have tighter stops but what I wanted to convey is that MCRI is not a free ride.
rcanfiel I have you on ignore (gone now), but I was browsing the forum without being logged in - and whoops, there you were Yes, I agree with that and I had a sell order about 0.0080 away from high bid in the Oct/Feb08 on Friday - the distance was further for the Nov/Feb. I also use past max favourable excursion and combine with the avg. net profit to find what I think of as an outragously good profit target. To clarify, it's a profit target that's so high that one should be extremely happy to get that exit.
Yes, I probably should sign up for Joe Ross' newsletter - but I don't intend to take more trades on this thread than the ones I planned in spring. As for Kansas Wheat, I don't think it's tradable with IB? There's probably some good potential between the different types of Wheat, but I've skipped these spreads since I can't access it electronically through IB. I don't think substitution is a good idea seeing as they're different kinds of Wheat used in different ways and thus would not trade completely in pair. I'm staying away from seasonality in currencies as I doubt the logic there somewhat. But good to hear energies are looking good for you