Category: Cool Source of Information

I am not having new sites or new places to visit. This week is about back to basic, making good use of the tools already found and underused by myself over the weeks, for technical analysis or fundamental.

• CME Group (e.g. http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/agricultural/grain-and-oilseed/corn.html):  As we develop more knowledge about technical analysis and want to use more of it, the types of charts and the features available for the charts we use become crucial.  CEM group trading pages not only provide the auto-refresh price information when the market is open, but also the charts of price movements in difference forms (e.g. line, bar, candlestick, area).  The charts also provide options to show features on top of the price movements like moving average, volume and open interest,  RSI (relative strength index), etc. All these come quite handy for technical analysis.
• All the major news media, some particular for crops. It’s good to keep updated with the daily news as Jim suggested, not only for the trading purpose, but also for ourselves to be in touch with what’s happening in our community and the world.  All the information collected would be helpful for analysis of the economy as well.  Here are a few news media I have been using over the weeks and will continue to use. Some of them are found by google search, some are from fellow classmates’ cool source:
  • Bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com)
  • Business Recorder (http://www.brecorder.com)
  • Grain News (http://www.grainews.ca)
  • The Crop Site (http://www.thecropsite.com)
  • Ag Web (http://www.agweb.com)

Cheers!

For the rest of the weeks, we will be shifting focus to technical analysis. The following 2 websites should be helpful for that.

•  Investopia (http://www.investopedia.com/university/technical): Andrew’s workshop on Technical analysis on the past Wednesday was enlightening. I seem to remember most of the names of the patterns, but not exactly how to make use of them. I found this site that offers a tutorial on technical analysis. As you go through the tutorial, you will get to learn about the philosophy behind Technical analysis, comparison between fundamental and technical analysis, price support and resistance, importance of volume and the price movement patterns, etc.
• TradingCharts (http://futures.tradingcharts.com/):  The charts here are rather interactive, you can click on the candlestick or the bar, etc of each day and the overview (volume., open interest, high price, low price, etc) of each trade day will be displayed. The charts also show the MADC (moving average divergence convergence) , RSI (Relative Strength Index), and Volume for further technical analysis. What’s more, it actually provides daily analysis (implications drawn from each indicator) underneath the charts. It’s good to learn from other’s analysis, learning from examples.  However, down the road, it’s important to do our own analysis instead of relying on others’ despite the convenience (there’s not too much explanation anyways, more on conclusions).

Happy trading with Technical Analysis or the combination of both Technical and fundamental analysis.

Cheers!

This week I came across 2 cool websites that focus on trading, provide knowledge and different tools for trading.

• Commodityhq.com (http://commodityhq.com): It has in depth analysis in the worldwide commodity industry (eg. American commodity industry, Canadian commodity industry,etc.); is has commodities database divided into different sectors (e.g. Agricultural)  providing ways to invest in the commodity futures markets with news, articles and analyses.  It also provides extensive knowledge about the trading platforms and trading in futures. Lastly, it has up-to-date heatmap keeping track of the movements of the commodity markets. (i.e. price changes in percentage per week, month, etc).
• Barchart.com (http://www.barchart.com/): This site has a lot to offer to help you get an extensive look into the trading markets.  It has an auto-refresh screen to display the prices of the markets. What’s more,  it aggregates the commodities of the same category with their latest contracts listed.  This saves you time in browsing around for their prices.  On the other hand, you will be able to find a lot of commentators sharing their ideas and thoughts about the markets on a daily basis.  Their commentaries are useful for forming trading strategies.

Cheers.

This week I came across these two websites as I was trying to look for more authoritative opinions:

• US Wheat Associates (http://www.uswheat.org): I think this is a good place to acquire extensive knowledge about wheat as a commodity.
  • It provides information like quality, cash prices at export locations,  official reports about different classes of wheat (e.g. Hard Red Spring, Soft Red Winter, Durum); Although CBOT is trading Soft Red Winter wheat, it’s important to know about the movement of other classes wheat.
  • It  provides the schedule of important industrial meetings.   We should expect some particular price movements over the days of meetings as a result from the topics and discussions in them.
  • It  also provides summaries and analysis on important news in their Media Center which give a good up-to-date overview on the current wheat market.
• National Corn Growers Association (http://www.ncga.com):  This is for corn and all about corn; its usage is similar to the above.  Besides, it has a section that covers different topics relevant to the corn market, such as Livestock, Ethanol, Farm Policy, etc.

If you are reading this, I hope this sources would be helpful for you too.

Cheers.

There are 2 websites I would like to suggest:

• Equity Clock website: it has information related to the stock markets.  It has daily news update of US economic events.  It also has commodity futures seasonality charts (representing the past 20 years till 2009) http://www.equityclock.com/charts/  Although it is not the same every year, it is probably beneficial to learn about the general movement of the futures prices in the past.
• Investopedia:  It’s a good place to go when you are not too sure about some terms related to trading and you want some quick help,  http://www.investopedia.com.  For example, when I read the news articles, I encountered the term “backwardation”. It’s taught in the class but I wasn’t too sure about it.   It’s available here with examples: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/contango_backwardation.asp , so it’s pretty handy for a quick look up.

Cheers!

I have come across 2 cool websites this week and extended use in one of the previous ones:

New:

• Weather Underground:  I like the way they allow you to select the types of map (eg. temperature, precipitation, snow depth, etc.) you want, as well as the regions of map (e.g. entire US, US midwest,etc) you want. http://www.wunderground.com/US/Region/US/2xTemperature.html. This website comes handy if you want to get a quick idea of how the weather condition is in the area of crop production.
• Farm Business Communications Grainew.ca:  This is a Canadian website and it publishes crop news with a focus on the crop situations in the US and Canada.  It also publishes news of other categories to do with agricultural such as livestock, the market, general, etc. This website is easy to navigate and it could be a cool site to find relevant news from different aspects.   http://www.grainews.ca/issues/search.aspx?qt=ts&tid=111&topic=Crops

• Bloomberg – Exchange Rate:  Reminded by Professor Vercammen, exchange rate is also an important aspect to look at when we handle our trades.  I think this could be a place to go for global news about exchange rate. http://topics.bloomberg.com/exchange-rate/

Enjoy!

In the past week, we just had an assignment with a question where we needed to examine the USDA reports on Crop Production over a historical time period and see whether there’s link between the shocks of futures prices and the released information.  What’s more interesting is that a new UDSA report on quarterly Grain Stocks was released on the past Friday and caused the corn, wheat, soybeans futures prices to spike up.

I didn’t pay attention to USDA (http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome) prior to the assignment or the Friday shocks.  Its official information really plays a major role in affecting the futures prices.  The daily news prior to the official reports could be affecting the futures price too but those are more like expectations / estimations, and the official reports are stating more accurately about the situations supported by government statistical data.  Sometimes, if there’s large discrepancy between the estimations and the actual situation, it would probably cause a turning point for the futures prices.  It’s worthwhile studying this USDA site further since I am not sure of what other information it offers.

I have been using the sites I referred to in the previous week.  I should start looking for more reliable sources for information.

I started out my research with Google search engine and I did notice a few websites that  follow the commodity market quite closely and produce timely updates about the crops in the commodity market. Here are a few websites I found this week that provided me useful information:

• Reuters US (http://www.reuters.com/):
  • Reuters^[1] is the world’s most renowned news media, it is widely recognized as a credible source of global news and analysis, etc.
  • You can find the news about the crops: corn, wheat, soybeans by using their search engine (For example, for soybeans news, you would have the most updated lists of news here:  http://www.reuters.com/search?blob=soybean).
• Agriculture Alberta (http://www.agriculture.alberta.ca):
  • This website is published by Government of Albert, it has information, news about Alberta and Canadian agriculture business and market; It also have information,news about the global agriculture market. I found the information of US crops production areas from their site (http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/sis5219).
  • What’s more, it has a weekly audio update interviewing industry professionals about the Grains and Oilseed market; global and local highlights, some analysis and forecast will be delivered every Friday.  The report they had this week about soybeans has a good summary of the soybeans market and more (http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/newslett.nsf/all/cotl19969).
• Bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/): It is an American multinational mass media^[2]. Quite a few news articles about soybeans I read this week were published by them.

 
References:
1.  Thomson Reuters. (2012). Awards & Recognition. Retrieved from http://thomsonreuters.com/about/awards_recognition/

2. Wikipedia. (2012,Sept.). Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_L.P.