We only took a week off from trading and blogging, but it felt eons! Definitely feels like it’s been more than a week!

Strange…when I had to bid again at the beginning of this week…I actually had to look at my notes to check how to bid properly again…going short/long/offset….

I did not have any open positions from last week because I didn’t want to risk losing while not paying attention to trading, so this week I started from scratch again!

I wrote the expert blog this week, and I paid extra attention to wheat because there was much information on the Black Sea Region having a lot of supply of wheat, so much that they need to plan how to export it. With this in mind, I really expected U.S wheat to fall because of high production elsewhere, and that demand for wheat from these regions will increase due to lower prices.

I only bid twice this week, both times going short in wheat.

Wednesday 26^th
Short/wheat/1 @ 413.3
entered the market, and made quite a lot of profit because wheat fell by approximately 25cents that day.
profit = $1095

Thursday 27^th
Didn’t bid or offset, sadly, wheat price went up by almost how much it fell yesterday, so I made a loss today.
profit = -$1230

Friday 28^th
Still having faith that wheat prices would fall, especially after a big jump, I bid another short wheat contract at 644.8. I entered the market, but the price didn’t drop at all.
Profit = -20
thankfully, the price didn’t fluctuate that much so I didn’t make a huge loss.

Total profit this week = -$155

Short blog this week! Have a nice weekend everyone!

Caroline

A very depressing week for me.

Even though it was only 3 days, it felt like a really long week….Personally, I felt like everything was raining down on me this past week…I think it was the assignment and cases, and the stress from thinking about the midterms for next week. I’m really nervous about the midterms….especially Jim’s….

Anyway, sorry, a little late in blogging this week. I have to admit that I haven’t been as engaged and focus on bidding compared to the first few weeks, again, just too much to do so I didn’t really have time to do research and bid.

This week made me realized how lost I was without having the expert blogs in helping me decide what to bid on. It was like a lost of direction, and it was a lot of work to research on every aspect by myself. So this week, I only focused on supply and demand (again).

Open position from last week:
Short/soybean/1
Long/corn/1

Soybean: looked at supply. News on Oct. 10 stated that soybean yield in 2011 has been quite disappointing. The harvest season for soybean is almost over, but yields have been below average, especially in the U.S. due to the heavy rains during June, and some areas have started the planting season late; hence, the soybean supply isn’t very optimistic. So I decided to offset my short contract in soybean.

Corn: I decided to keep my long position in corn. At the beginning of the week, I read that the USDA reported a fairly optimistic progress for corn, but commodity specialist say that the USDA might have been exaggerating the number as corn yield is not has high as it has been stated, also, corn harvest has slowed down to poor harvest. Then in the middle of the week, big news was released stating that China has confirmed their large order or corn, so I assumed that corn futures prices will keep going up. However, near the end of the week, it was also reported that private exporters have increased their exports and U.S has cut exports, so I wonder what will happen to corn prices next week.

Wheat: Simply based my bidding strategy on the news about record high wheat production and high ending stocks, even though wheat exports are up as well. Also, Wheat prices made a huge jump on Tuesday, and I predicted that the prices will make a huge dive again on Wednesday, so I decided to bid short for Wednesday. My prediction was right and so I made 1700 from wheat. I was worried that it might fluctuate again, but I held firm my stance and stayed in short

This week I made 2000 from my long corn contract, and 1900 from my short wheat contract.

My current margin balance is $42,135.

As of the end of this week, I currently hold 1 long corn contract and 1 short wheat contract.

The coming 2 weeks will be super busy I feel, but hopefully I will be able to put a little bit more time into the game in the coming weeks.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

The exhausted Caroline

Open positions from last week:
2  long wheat contracts

What an exhausting and un-dynamic week for me!! I’m sorry Andrew, but I must admit that I did not bid much this week…=(

Today, Thursday 5^th, spent 4 hrs after class to understand and work on Jim’s assignment…it has used up all my brain power, so I have decided to not bid tonight and just leave my contracts as they are right now.

NOTE: my futures trading game sheet is EMPTY right now, so I can’t check my margin balance or anything. Will update blog once its fixed.

As of today, I have 2 long wheat contracts from last week, 1 long corn contract that I bade on the 5^th, and 1 short soybean contract on the 6^th.

Jim mentioned that he didn’t want us to recklessly bid and have too many open positions; I decided to just bid 1 contract for each commodity this week.

So this week, I finally decided to try and understand the exchange rate expert blog. They stated that the US currency is appreciating, which means US commodities would be expensive to other countries, so this would lead to a decrease of demand in US imports. Just based on this information, I would expect prices to decrease.
Last week Friday, US announced that they have an extra 200 million bushels of corn, which I thought would keep the prices down for corn. However, I also read that China will be demanding a record high amount of imports, so based on that, I assumed corn prices would rise; hence, bade long on corn.

Soybean was very simple, I based my assumptions on the wiki expert blogs. Demand group stated that there is record high production with decreased global demand, our group concluded that soybean supply will be increased because harvest just started, and finally, technical analysis group said that soybean market is still quite bearish. Thus, based on all these information, I decided to go short on soybean.

WILL UPDATE PROFITS WHEN GAME SHEET BACK TO NORMAL!!

Have a WONDERFUL long, long weekend everyone! Get a good rest and read those 80-paged M&E Reports =)

Happy Thanksgiving and have delicious turkey dinner and pumpkin desserts!!

Caroline