The silly season is upon us
In NASCAR the so-called "silly season" is that period at the end of the year when teams are realigning. Drivers are going to other...
Grain market turns back south
Last week we looked at charts, trying to find signals of direction. Well, we know more about direction now. Corn prices broke sharply on...
I call it ‘the rearview mirror’ grain market
It is hard to get a handle on where markets are going these days. The easiest method, with the least recriminations when you are...
Grain harvest struggles to its conclusion
When prices go up and down, sometimes without reason, we call it "volatile." When we can explain it, we describe cycles and retracements and...
Crop harvest drags into Thanksgiving
USDA released the Sunday night Crop Progress Report Monday after the close, and it was not pretty. Harvest still drags on, and rain coming...
Slow crop harvest, but a fast market
December corn futures gained 9 cents in the last five minutes of trade Monday. Traders seemed to be reacting to fears of lack of...
Grain markets: Are we swimming into new crop?
There has been a lot of grain market volatility to confuse things. One day, we were up 4 cents and the next down 4 cents. The optimist says we are going higher, the pessimist says we are going lower, and the realist says the market did nothing for those two days.
The squirrel and the ‘possum: A story of American agriculture
I have had bird feeders close to the house for 35 years. The bear tore them down a couple of times a few years...
Grain markets: Low prices, but more demand
Two old axioms of the grain trade cropped up in conversations last week. One is that a big crop keeps getting bigger. The other...
Grain marketing rules have changed
We can't go back to the markets of 2008.
