By Wednesday things were looking up for me, my portfolio had rebounded from week 4’s losses. I was sitting comfortably at a return of 3.16%. I am now sitting very uncomfortably with a rotated pelvis (bowling accident) and a net return of -14.41%!
For those of you who may not of ever bowled, it is a very dangerous sport. I do not recommend it. I have included an educational video for your referral.
As for the extreme losses suffered by my portfolio, I can thank my large short position in wheat. As described in my week 4 post, I believed the drama surrounding the American shutdown would have an overall negative effect on agricultural commodities.
Turns out I was wrong, in fact, I was dead wrong. As per a Agrimoney article commodity markets have a tendency to outperform other sectors of the economy in past shutdowns. To add to insult, recent supply worries in Argentina and Russia have contributed extra support for American wheat crops.
5 Day Wheat Prices
My gut feeling is these fourth month high prices for wheat won’t last, I felt I had to exit my short positions on wheat. I just could not afford to lose any more. I have recently exited all of my wheat shorts and replaced them with 13 long wheat contracts. These long positions have already gained some of my losses back, however I will have to watch the markets closely early Monday morning to make sure my position does not come back to bite me.
Below is my portfolio performance since we started, please note the large loss I suffered today is not reflected. It is clear my returns are extremely volatile. 
It is clear I am not doing too great trading primarily wheat and corn. I plan on expanding my selection of futures next week in attempt to hedge against any huge price fluctuations experienced by a particular commodity.
Hey dude, I think you’re right and that these wheat prices won’t last. Would not be surprised if it was 15-20% lower in 4 months time. Indeed, it can be tricky managing a position with a short time horizon. You’ve experienced one of the largest problems faced by most hedge fund managers out there – who have to try to manage their portfolio balance from month to month, often with sub-optimal results. What I’ve learned is that common sense goes against modern financial theory, that volatility isn’t really your enemy, bad decisions are.
The original finance theorizers used volatility as a proxy for risk, the practicioners simply equated them