Without any previous experiences in the future market, I just searched the Internet to get some information about CBOT future trading.

I got some information that a drought that settled over more than half of the continental United States in the summer of 2012 is the most widespread in more than half a century. And it is likely to grow worse. The drought has sapped the production of corn, wheat and other crops. The most recent federal assessment in August is that parts of at least 33 states, mostly in the West and the Midwest, are experiencing drought conditions that are severe or worse. It is affecting 87 percent of the land dedicated to growing corn, 63 percent of the land for hay and 72 percent of the land used for cattle.

  (yellow and red area is the drought area)

Source:   http://blogs.usda.gov/tag/weather-update/

Even if the harvest season is coming, but I think everything is serious due to the drought issue, slower harvest progress is expected this week in the US Midwest due to occasional light rainfall in most growing areas, it leads to a result that market grain supply less than demand. According to the above analysis, I chose a long wheat contract (W2Z) and a long buy corn contract (C2Z) hoping to be in the same situation as forecast, but unfortunately, the actual situation and forecasting is the opposite. In the end, I lost a lot of money.

After trading, I confused about why prediction and actual different. Although there is the existence of the drought, still have harvest. Therefore, in short term, supply is greater than demand rather than predicate before, also I must to search for other useful information (news, policies and so on) to make predictions.