This week, I made several movements on my futures. Instead of submitting orders on the weekend and then tossing this trading game thing aside for the whole week, I operated frequently, which brought me obvious benefits. Yes, I got extra ten grand in my account. My current equity is $49385.55. Things below are what I have done:

09/30/2012 Movements:

a. Went 5 shorts on Dec.2012 corn(C2Z)

b. Holding 1 short on Mar.2013 soybeans(S3H)

c. Went another 4 shorts on Mar.2013 soybeans(S3H)

10/02/2012 Movements:

a. Offset 5 shorts Dec.2012 corn(C2Z)

(Price in: 757.00 ; Price out: 753.25)

b. Went 3 shorts on Dec.2012 corn(C2Z)

(Price in: 753.25)

c. Offset 5 shorts on Mar.2013 soybeans(S3H)

(One contract: Price in: 1572.25; Price out: 1501.75;

The other four: Price in: 1529.50; Price out: 1501.75)

d. Went 3 longs on Mar.2013 soybeans(S3H)

10/03/2012 Movements:

Offset 3 longs on Mar.2013 soybeans(S3H)

(Price in:1501.75; Price out: 1501.50)

So, up to now, what I still hold are 3 short Dec.2012 corn(C2Z). Reasons for making each movement above are given below:

1. Reasons for Sep.30 movements:   

Reasons were listed in “Week2 The Road Ahead” last week. An additional one that strenghened my confidence is that “the USDA on last Friday said domestic soybeans inventories as of Sept. 1 were 169 million bushels, above the average analyst prediction of 132 million bushels.”^①

2. Reasons for Oct.02 ,03 movements:

For Corn:

Because there was just a slightly decrease in corn on  Oct.02 ,I started to reconsider my strategy. Besides, I saw news saying“the surprisingly low level of old crop stocks should be enough to bring the recent price slide to a halt.” ^② So for caution, I chose to offset my previous short corn. But since there was no other sources providing bearish news for corn, I believed that downward trend in corn still existed.So I went 3 shorts on corn(C2Z) in the same day,hoping the price would fall on Oct.04(Transctions have one day delay on TradeSim)

For Soybeans:

The only reason for me to change soybeans from short to long is that Mar.2013 soybeans hit three-month-closing-low on Oct.02,digging 1501.75^①,which I thought would be the turning point for soybeans to bounce back, for the technical consideration. However,soybeans kept going down on next day.And that was the reason why I chose to offset my long soybeans on Oct.03.But the latter few days did witnessed the bounce.

 3. Reasons for holding 3 shorts on corn(C2Z):

As I have mentioned, I expected a lower price in corn. And there it was! Oct.02 news showed that “54% of the U.S. corn crop has been harvested, according to USDA’s latest crop progress and condition ratings. And the five-year average for this time of year is 20%” ^③.Later, as we can see from the data last week, despite the affection of the weaker US dollar, the corn price still went down on last Friday. I interpreted this as a signal of a higher yield expectation in corn. So I haven’t offset corn.

Reference:

①/http://futures.tradingcharts.com/news/futures/DJ_U_S__GRAIN_AND_SOY_REVIEW__Soybeans_Fall_on_Better_Yield_Views_186585928.html

②http://www.agweb.com/article/grain_stocks_provide_surprises_but_less_information_than_usual/

③http://www.agweb.com/article/corn_54_harvested_soybeans_41/