Martin Kronicle

Imagine if corn got so high that soft drink makers had to start using real sugar as sweetener?

Corn and Soybeans Reach Records

Big yield downgrade in grains combined with the widening shortfall in rain during India’s monsoon season could put enormous upward pressure on corn and grains.

I wrote how Hungry Hogs Lift Corn Prices last year for Barron’s.

Don’t forget, china needs corn to feed its hogs and they import upwards of 4 x their needs. Holy cow!!!

Corn deterioration heralds ‘huge yield downgrade’

Makes you think about who your friends are at your firm. My guess is there are more fair weather friends around you than you know.

Take a look around your office today and see who those people are. The reason I have to work by myself is that I always told those folks to go f*ck themselves without hesitation.

Traders pay the bills.

Your manager is overhead.

Cotton Trader Fires Back

Most baseball fans, real fans, are aware of the modern day Closer and his effect on the game. And we’ve certainly seen two of the best during the past decade in Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera (Mo).

But before the rise of the modern day Closer, you have to give it up for the old school Closers: they came to the mound with the game on the line and pitched for several innings!

One of the best of his time was Rich “Goose” Gossage who I was lucky enough to see throw at the old Yankee stadium.

Bill James is quoted as saying that from 1975 to 1984 his fastball was the best among Closers, regularly hurling it between 98 and 102 mph.

Like Mo, Gossage relied on 2 pitches: his heater and a slurve. But one thing he has on Mo is that in those days, Closers and Relief pitchers threw for 2-3 innings, combining the roles of what we are familiar with today from the “set-up guy” to the Closer. Goose did both.

To this day, Gossage remains on the All Time Top 10 List of Games Finished although he has not thrown a ball since his retirement in 1994.

Goose turns 61 today. Happy Birthday Goose!

A few points I’d like to make:

Airfares go up, airlines blame speculators for higher “Jet Fuel A” costs. Prices drop, and airfares stay the same. Plus we have the f*cking bag fees.

Airlines should be publicly thanking speculators for knocking down prices.

Airlines should be getting hammered in the press for price gouging.

Investors pulled money from commodities? Must have been unsophisticated retail investors. How do I know? If there was anew outflow like this article alleges, the investments were likely in long-only commodity index products.

Sophisticated commodity investors and traders know to trade in up and down markets. Commodity markets are cyclical in natures, not secular like stocks. That means you can go long as well as short and you’re just as willing to.

Two, most long-only indices are very heavily weighted in the energy markets in commodities such as hearing oil, RBOB gasoline, and especially crude oil.

The GS commodity index has a 52% allocation to light sweet crude and Brent crude. When you add in the Heat and RBOB, you’re looking at an almost 72% allocation to the crude complex.

When those commodities go down like they have, weak hands puke out of their long index positions and look for less volatile securities like….GOOG or AAPL!

Prices of Raw Goods Plunge on Slowdown