gentlemen ... I used to work for a commodity FCM on the old CSCE floor ... and remember sugar #11 trading under 5 maybe even under 4 or 3 please do not think that you can take a long term position in sugar or any other commodity or futures market and not be willing to take a loss and exit the position if your losses mount good luck to you
Sure is. I bought Sugar several times in the 11's and took small losses. Cotton though seems like it wants to ride along with Soybeans (they compete for acreage in the South) whereas Sugar is seemingly unresponsive to Corn's ride on the Ethanol Express. In a weird way CT is an ethanol play. Corn acreage in the Midwest is squeezing Soybean production and as Bean prices rally it's causing Southerners to think Beans instead of CT which could cause CT shortages. Sugar is the red-headed step-child........
The rants are getting louder... http://www.opinionjournal.com/colum...10094&mod=RSS_Opinion_Journal&ojrss=frontpage http://www.futuresource.com/news/story.jsp?i=i4768892211232112704 SNIP " California Gov. Schwarzenegger said U.S. policies that subsidize corn-ethanol while taxing imported Brazilian ethanol are "not in the best interest of the customer." Corn ethanol must be transported from the U.S. heartlands to the U.S. West and East Coasts, where demand is strongest. Soft drink manufacturers are paying more for high fructose corn syrup, but major producers like Coca-Cola (KO) and Pepsi (PEP) will stick with the grain-based sweetener for now since it's still cheaper than sugar. Small, but fast-growing Jones Soda Co. (JSDA), based in Seattle, recently shifted back to sugar, saying expensive HFCS was one of several reasons for its decision. Jones plans to plaster billboards in its key markets with the slogan "Corn is for Cars; Sugar is for Soda." "
You might be right, we could still see lower prices, but the risk of a short squeeze is also there. I*m still in, but prices could go easily down to 8.1 ( we are talking about # 11). In this case I would roll- over and wait.
Rolling over starting from 18 of June. Most important, IMHO, is that you are not leveraged. I have $ 9000 in cash in the portfolio per each sugar contract. So I'm able to take losses, if necessary and don't have to liquidate because of adverse price action.
US is still one of the largest sugar growers in the world. Yeah, it's not the sugar economy it was hundreds of years ago, but it is still very significant, especially considering how much more diversified the economy became over the last 100 years.. The govt supported price is to protect the profits of the sugar industry a.k.a. line the pockets of those in charge. It's an artificially held up price, no doubt about that. An article I read actually states that without the subsidies, US can make sugar ethanol (the best ethanol) with little government help, since the cost of sugar production is still low enough. But that's not how the industry works. So instead a whole scheme was unfolded which lines the pockets of corn growers. Some of these entities also happen to grow sugar.
Hi--I just completed my first trade with futures. I had bought the July Sugar #11 contract at 8.72 in May. I recently sold it for 8.77. When I do the math, my profit should be a small amount. But when I looked at my IB statement, it had quoted me the closing price of 8.56 (2 days ago) which would be a gain of 8.77-8.56, 21 cents vs. 5 cents, a bigger profit. Does this mean that my initial buy in price does not matter with overnight trades because futures use the mark to market accounting method? I know they use this method to compute my daily margin but I didn't realize that they use this method to compute my gain/loss as well on a daily basis.