What Went RIGHT/WRONG

I am having a hard time comprehending what happened this week. I was anticipating significant gains, based on the price distributions at the CME group website.¹ Firstly, this is the first time that I ventured into the soybeans market and traded three contracts. I adopted long positions on two contracts for November, whereas I went short on an August contract. My going in price for the long contracts was 1563 and by the end of the week the prices rose but by only about one price unit. Also, the prices on my short contract had also gone down significantly by 12 price units. Now, all these numbers suggest that I must have made gains but instead I was appalled to see a loss of $1150 on my long contracts, while my short contract presented zero gains or losses.

My rationale for going long this week was inspired from the weakening U.S. dollar. Undervaluation of the U.S. dollar increases the demand for American soybean on the world market and increases its price for the consumers in states.  Moreover, there were reports and claims of an increased ratio of U.S. jobless rate, as well positive economic reports from the European Central Bank played a part in increasing the prices for soybeans throughout the week, I had hoped for the trend to ensue, which it did according to the CME website, but the results indicated otherwise. Furthermore, my reasoning for going short was due to the encouraging news that I had heard about a better crop in South America (especially Argentina).

Here are the numerical details for this week:

(1)    Nov (S2X) – LONG: Price In: 1563, Committed: 2700, Gain/Loss: -575

(2)    Nov (S2X) – LONG: Price In: 1563, Committed: 2700, Gain/Loss: -575

(3)    Aug (S3Q) – SHORT: Price In: 717.75, Price Out: 769, Gain/Loss:  2087

(4)    Equity (Last Week): 42596.02; Equity (This Week): 41444.58