The 501 video project has taken all my energy this week and has wiped out my motivation to right this blog.  But despite the fact that is almost 10pm on friday and i’m still at room 366, I will try my best to make it interesting.

This week had some interesting things.  Markets are nervous.  Nobody really knows the impact that the US government shut down will have on them.  Probably a higher one the more it lasts.  What we do know is the USDA released its quarterly stock report before closing for business and it has some interesting news which will analyze discuss further in this report.

First I would like to say this week I had a slight improvement.  My portfolio now shows a couple of little gains overshadowed by the huge hit I took on the first week by trading coffee, which by the way didn’t really move this week.  I’ll keep holding my position.

I decided to buy wheat on Monday because it was in a good streak and analyst said prices will keep on rising.  I had a small gain for the first time!   The December contracts finished a little bit under on Friday, but as an analyst I read from said “it has finished higher 8 out of the last 10 trading sessions”.  Supposedly that definitely marks a trend.  I personally believe wheat will keep on rising next week because there are some signs world output this year will be lower.  Wheat experts are blaming it on heavy rains in Russia and Ukraine.  There is also the expectation that China will have a 9-year high import.  Apart form the USDA news. apparently markets are taking this into consideration and that’s why we have been seeing this upward trend.  I will hold my position.  Probably sell mid week and buy again before the weekend.

After I bought wheat, I heard about the USDA quarterly report mentioned previously and thought it would make prices go up.  It stated stockpiles of all major grains were 20% lower this September than last year so I decided to buy soybeans too.  The markets didn’t seem to care too much about this and just like wheat prices, soybean actually fell during the week.  I though it was going to end up bad again, but surprisingly things recovered by the end of the week and I actually ended up with a small gain.  Maybe markets just took a while to realize we are indeed facing smaller crops, or they were just distracted by the US shutdown.  Judging from this video today at the CBOT they ended up caring a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eiWYNzF6Uc

Have a great weekend.