Archives
April 2021 Market Letter
Commentary provided by Chad Burlet of Third Street AG Investments April had the largest one month rally of corn futures ever. Considering the 162 year history of corn futures, that is no small milestone. May Corn futures rallied $1.75¾ (31.1%) this month. In the process the front month soybean/corn ratio moved from 2.55 to 2.12 and May […]
Inflation Coming?
Want to play a “fun” game? Go to Google and type “currency crisis (insert any country name)” and see your results. Luckily for Americans, you will find that the United States is one of the few countries that have avoided this designation so far. As one of my Polish friends who immigrated asked me, “Why […]
Q1 Agricultural Market Commentary
Guest post by Malinda Goldsmith of Four Seasons Commodities Agricultural markets have completed monstrous seven-year bear moves for good reason. Consider that we’ve had four years in a row of record or near-record crops, generally benign growing seasons in North America, ever-larger crops in South America, a strong dollar and a trade war which focused […]
Why Traditional Hedges Fail
An article by Scot Billington, Covenant Capital Management Unfortunately, most traditional hedges fail to deliver in several key areas. Buy-and-hold investing has been wildly successful since 1982; however, its adherents have had to endure two 50% drawdowns, a 25% down day, and 14 years of zero return. Long-term wealth is significantly impacted by drawdowns of […]
Futures Contracts are Easy. You are Already Using Them.
I have spent over a decade in the futures industry, so I am accustomed to blank stares when I tell people what I do. Most immediately assume it is too complicated to even try to understand. The ironic thing is that we all intuitively understand them already. We trade them all the time. We can […]
Evaluating Futures Traders: Going Beyond Traditional Search Methods
As one of the world’s largest futures databases, we begin talking to traders often at the earliest stages of their evolution up to billions of dollars in assets. But not all beginnings are equal, as some achieve early success and others never find it. Our challenge is determining which ones provide our investors with the […]
Incredible Velocity Movement Between KC Wheat and Chicago Corn
Commentary provided by Chad Burlet of Third Street AG Investments As always, the month of March and the first quarter ended with the USDA’s release of their March 1 stocks report and their spring planting intentions report. These reports often have the potential to dramatically disrupt conventional wisdom and today’s report did not disappoint. For the past […]
February 2021 Grain Market Commentary
Commentary provided by Chad Burlet of Third Street AG Investments With only one trading day left in February, it’s clear that the spring acreage fight has captured the market’s attention. While old crop corn and soybeans struggled near highs that were set weeks ago, November soybeans and December corn raced to new contract highs yesterday. Through […]
Understanding Minimum Investment Sizes
When launching their programs, managers in the futures space are faced with a dilemma. First, they need to choose a trade level. This is an easy process for an equity manager as they often trade 100% of the cash available and sometimes decide to use leverage. However, ALL futures contracts already have the leverage built-in, […]
Commodities: A Range of Opportunities for 2021 – Market Outlook
“With a new secular bull trend, Commodities are among the most attractive markets this year. This commodity environment could be an exceptional moment to be in a spread program.” The economic pendulum tends to be swinging towards commodities. The notion that low commodity prices are their own cure may be playing out in 2021[1], with […]
Market Sentiment. I feel that you should pay attention.
Market sentiment is a broad term that encompasses the prevailing feeling that investors have about a market. Measuring this “feeling” can be accomplished in a variety of ways. CNNMoney has a Fear and Greed Index that displays this in a simple format showing when investors are most willing to take on risk or hunker down. […]
Investment Portfolio Design for an Unpredictable World
Investors are always faced with choices. My experience tells me that these choices are often driven by simple quirks of human behavior. Two of these that seem to be big drivers seem to be recency bias and a desire for simplification. Both of these naturally make us poor investors. For example, in March of 2020 […]
CTA Spotlight: Adalpha Asset Management
Diversified Short Term Program Overview “The whole reason my algorithms work, the way they work in all environments, they’ve been working so long is because I’m a prop trader. And that’s what a CTA doesn’t have on me. “ Gary Polony describes in his quiet office on the 38th floor of the Chicago Board of […]