Week 10….already?! does this mean…finals soon?!?!?!? Oh no..

So how is everyone feeling??? It’s the last week for the trading game…such a weird feeling…will I feel empty in the remaining weeks because I don’t need to think about bidding anymore..?? hmm

Anyway, let’s talk about my strategy first

Disclaimer: trading game sheet went haywire again, so unable to check my open positions and margin balance. The numbers below are my guesstimates..will update once its back up.
At the beginning of this week…
Open positions: 3 long contracts in corn, 1 long contract in soybean, 2 short contracts in wheat
Margin balance: $40,975

Monday 14^th
Bids: offset with 3 short contracts in corn, and 2 long contracts in wheat
Monday is always the day I make my bets based on the expert info from each expert group, because they/we are EXPERTS! Anyway, although it is said that corn price could possibly hit record high due to tight stock, and that the US dollar was depreciating, I already read that production has been looking pretty good from other major corn producing countries and they are competing with US corn. Technical analysis group also stated that corn is following a downward trend, entering a bearish market. Thus, I decided to offset my long contracts. As for wheat, I didn’t have any specific reasons for offsetting wheat =s..although Black Sea Regions are still pretty up there leading the wheat exports, wheat prices really made me upset last week, so I wanted to abandon them this week.

Tuesday 15^th
Did not bid

Wednesday 16^th
Bids: 1 short contract in corn, 1 short contract in soybean
Needed to offset soybean.

Thursday 17^th
Did not bid.
Due to the crazy Euro crisis, the prices of all 3 commodities fell really low today! I was shocked and happy because I had 2 short contract in corn. If only I bid more contracts! Poop! Anyway, riding along the waves…I made about $1500 from that one contract today.

Friday 18^th
Did not bid.

Margin balance at the end of the game: approximately $43,000

So let’s get all cheesy and emotional now hahah….”walking down the memory lane”…okay, let’s not get too cliché here

So I still remember when the term just started and we were being bombarded with intense course outlines, high expectations, the coming of no-lifeness and such difficult instructions about the trading game (at that time). I was honestly super confused with what I had to do. I chose to be in the productions…but what?! Supply in producing countries…where in the world would I find info on that??? It was the first day of bidding, and I was with ellie…struggling to understand the basic rules of this game called…”futures market trading”…what is this thing all about?!?!?!

I thought the terms were really weird, why long and short? Bull and bear…huh?! It was definitely an experience. It actually felt good that everyone was panicking big time in the beginning because it was due to this confusion that I forced myself to go online and google everything about futures trading. I took down notes of the meanings of all the terms, the rules and harvest seasons, profits at the back of my notebook! Now when I look back, I just smile, because now I can memorize them backwards! HA!…i’m kidding, I remember I forgot how to bid after a long weekend…=.=

I’m sure I’ve only learned about 30% of what futures markets are all about, but I am really glad that we got to play this simulated game and it was on-going throughout the term. If it was only for a couple weeks, we wouldn’t have been able to apply what we have learned in class throughout the term into this game. Reading other people’s strategies was tedious at times, but when we look back, I think we all learned the most from reading other people’s blogs.

We only concentrated on 3 commodities and it was already so challenging to gather information, analyze and bid…I just cannot imagine that there is a whole world of commodities out there….how do pro-traders keep track?! @_@

Maybe my brain has selective vision hahah every week I TELL myself to look more into the technical analysis side of things, but once I see all those numbers and graphs, I give up..sigh. So throughout the term, I have mainly based my bids on the fundamentals of supply and demand. The expert groups were definitely helpful in saving time, but also having 20 brains to analyze was better than just having 1 brain. It was also nice to discover so many sites that has info on commodities, I’m pretty sure I will still be checking some of the sites from time to time to see what’s going on in the world.

So overall, this trading game was definitely a part of my life. I was telling my friends about soybeans prices, but they didn’t even care and they eventually got sick of hearing about soybeans. Hahaha

Last but not least, a biggggg shout out to Andrew and Javier!!! Woohooo!! Thanks so much for keeping on track with 20 students’ trading sheets…it must’ve been intense!! Thanks for all the help these weeks!

Now one last question….will twitter be forever quiet now that the game is over…??

Caroline

I..am..so…exhausted…

Energy level will be reaching its low soon….bad sign bad sign….

So this week was weird…

First, my open positions from last week were 1 long soybean contract, and 2 short wheat contracts.
Margin at the beginning of the week: $43,980

Monday 7^th
Did not bid.
Margin balance: $42,770

Tuesday 8^th
2 long corn contracts, successfully entered the market.

Corn price made a jump this day as I gained about $800. Also gained from the soy contract, but lost a lot from the short wheat contracts, thus I had a net loss.
Margin Balance: $41,740

Wednesday 9^th
1 long corn contracts, successfully entered the market.
Margin Balance: $41,455

Thursday 10^th
Did not bid
Considered offsetting my long contracts in soybean and corn since I lost about $1500 from these 2 commodities the day before. However, I did not as I got an advice from Deron on twitter to keep my contracts as it was expected that the prices would go up due to lower yield of corn and soybean in the US. I took the advice, but I actually lost even more the next day! Hahaha I lost approximately $2500 on this day. I think I did not do enough analysis for the market, hence I lost. I should’ve looked into the demand side because although US soybean and corn yields were lowered, there had been news stating that US exports had also substantially reduced. Therefore, the price went down rather than up, even if they went up, they wouldn’t have been big jumps.
Margin Balance: $41,285

Friday 11^th
Did not bid

Margin balance at the end of this week: $40,975

I think I was pretty lucky this week because I had contracts in each commodity which really reduced my risks. If I only went with wheat, I would’ve lost a lot in the beginning of the week, but due to my long corn and soy contracts, the loss was offset. In the next two days, I lost of lot from the long contracts of soy and corn, but thankfully, the gains from my short wheat contracts offset my loss. So overall, the change in my margin balance wassn’t considered too large, it definitely could’ve been worse.

This week was definitely weird because the prices went in complete opposite directions halfway through the week so it was very difficult to predict the prices. That was one reason I didn’t bid much or offset anything as I just wanted to have contracts in everything, and I didn’t know what to do really, so I decided to ride along with the market.

Caroline

Can’t believe its already week 8 into the program, its been 2 months everyone! Doesn’t time just fly by!! And surprisingly, only 2 weeks left in this trading game~will you miss this game in term 2? Will it be weird not having to check on commodity news everyday? Will it be weird not having to tweet, blog every week?? Hahaha

Anyway, back to what my strategy for bidding was this week…actually, it’s nothing very interesting. I have to admit that I haven’t been super active in bidding, all these projects that we have are draining my energy big time!!

So, let’s see…what did I do this week….mmmm…

Open position from last week: Short/wheat/2

Margin Balance = $42,030

Monday
Actually, to be very honest, I forgot about bidding until the mandatory Tuesday, so that was why I just left my open positions.
Surprisingly, I made the most profit on this day from the big drop in wheat prices.
Profit = $1620

Tuesday
The reason I kept my 2 open wheat positions throughout the week was because there was big news about the Black Sea Region having increased a large amount of supply of wheat. Not only this, specifically, Egypt, one of the world’s largest importers of wheat confirmed to buy a big amount from Ukraine. From a supply and demand perspective, this would definitely compete with US wheat exports, thus lowering US wheat price. Also, wheat news made a couple of headlines throughout the week, indicating that US wheat price had been pressured to a downward trend.
Profit = -$180

Wednesday
Hmmm..should I bid for corn or soybean? That was the question? I sought opinions from other classmates, some told me to go long on corn, but I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be the best decision because corn prices tended to fluctuate a lot, so I have always found it difficult to bid on corn. I decided to go long on soybean because production in the states wasn’t too optimistic, and the technical analysis group stated that the soybean market seemed to be in a bullish territory. I was correct as I made a profit of $220 from soybeans.
Profit = $880

After this day, I did not bid again for the week. As you can see, I made negative in the next 2 days due to my laziness and neglecting.

Thursday
Profit = $30

Friday
Profit = -$400

Margin Balance = $43,980
Profits this week = $1950

I’m pretty satisfied with my balance right now and the profits I made this week as I made -155 profits last week, so it was a big improvement!

Just a little thought: If US wheat demand decreases, wheat prices will decrease as well. Given that corn and wheat are substitutes; would farmers switch to growing more corn instead? However, EU corn exports are competing with US corn exports, giving pressure to US corn price. But what we saw this week what the corn price fluctuated a lot, I’m trying to think through why that was….Anyway, I know this section was pretty useless because I basically said nothing at all..but I went to see Jim today, and these were some things he told me think about now that we’ve learned the foundation of substitution.

Hopefully I will be able to learn more in the last 2 weeks.

Have a nice weekend!

Caroline