Thursday, March 21, 2013

Hard to Swallow Milk over $19

Sometimes it's hard to follow the iron laws of fashion: today I realized I had missed the rally in Class III milk yesterday and had to jump in at well over $19. Not a trade that looks very promising to me. But the only other trade today was the exit of a 3 month old short in cocoa that made pretty good money (almost $150/ton) and that always looked kind of dangerous to me as well.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Oldies Are the Best...

After dumping the sugar, the portfolio is trimmed to 9 commodities positions (4 long, 5 short) with the most recent put on March 7th and 8 of the 9 positions dating to February or earlier. No trades today. Emotionally, I would like to buy the tropicals-- sugar and cocoa--the prices seem pretty low and there are big spec shorts according to the CFTC. We'll just wait and see.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Sugar buzz

Caught the uptrend in sugar...right on the chin. Held longs for an extra day to see if the Cyprus effect wore off, but no bounce today, so we are gone.

Monday, March 18, 2013

Sticky Prices

Prices are a little bit sticky: that's the investment thesis. Of course, this is not a novel observation, and even if true, exploiting this phenomenon is not necessarily easy or lucrative.