Hi westernilliniosfarm,

First of all, wow..9 generations!  That is incredible.  Kudos to you and your family.

And second....congrats!  For only 24, you used a word that almost nobody uses in combination with marketing, and that word is "proactive".  If you are proactive, and wrong, you have time to steer the ship before it hits the rocks.  Instead, most of us have had beat into our minds that news drives price - again its our conditioning, and in your case likely 8 generations of it - and IMHO nothing is farther from the truth.  And since the events are unknown and random, we are essentially paralyzed from being proactive, and are "reactive" marketers.  Hindsight is always right, without question, but if you can make marketing plan ahead, you can build into that plan cost effective contingency plans.

So..here's an example of a contingency plan implemented on my own 2016 production.  I bought out of the money deferred calls to sell 2016 production against.  When price gets to those strikes,  I will sell the physical one way or another and it becomes risk less with the topside open.  Now, I can hear it already, if you know where the market is going, why build in a contingency plan?  Simple.  Because we are not, on my farm, making this physical sale at levels that would be considered long term sustainable, but the risks of doing nothing are huge.  If we were working in the last decade where margins worked better, the worst case scenario would be you made less.  Now, you are trying to make it work on the bottom line.  And just making the physical sale would be locking in lower than acceptable margins.  Your operation may be different, but as much as I like stirring the dirt, it is a whole bunch more fun doing it profitably.   And this may not work for you at all.  I had a conversation with an older gentleman recently that didn't want to use futures and options.  There are way to do that, but somebody has to accept the risk.  Sometimes, you here people talk about buying courage calls.  Well...effectively that is what I did, for way less money that you will be able to being "reactive". If that is what it takes to pull the trigger for a guy, then great. But generally, when these are bought, volatility is high and I like most everybody wants to spend the least amount of premium so you have to move up the strike ladder so far that, IMHO, unless you have a really good reason to expect much higher prices, your money would be better spent taking the wife out for a nice evening. 

So, the obvious problem comes back to that you have to have a price expectation to do this.  That expectation may be wrong...either lower or higher, but we need  an idea of what we are dealing with and do the best with it that we can.  I am pretty confident in my levels...admittedly probably to much so for my own good.  But, I am still going to manage risk, that's what its all about, not being right.

Like Tank mentioned, I do have paying clients, and it wouldn't be fair to them to release our numbers publicly.  We have in recent weeks released an weekly correspondence - some would call it a newsletter.  There is a three week trial available if you want to call, email, or request it through the website and we will get you on the list.  Honestly, the longer term targets remain for MSI Premier customers only, so while you are welcome to read the content, you will not get the targets nor any of the upcoming "inserts" that will need to be done in the upcoming weeks, dissecting exactly why we think what we think.  It is not free, and honestly higher priced than most advisory letters.  We studied the pricing and content of the major competitors, and IMHO, we offer more value.  But we are a brokerage firm, and admittedly commissions/fees pay the bills, not newsletters.  So, we would be glad to discuss what works best for you.  There is no one size fits all.

CMN...Thanks for the kind words.  IMHO, there are two type of sales people.  The first is they are just good at selling.  They might think their product is useless, but can sell it with no second thoughts.  The second is somebody that is passionate in their product, and this makes them a great sales person.  And while I am much closer to the later, I am not a sales person.   Just the thought of selling something makes my blood pressure rise, and palms sweat.  So, no selling here. Just offer a service at a price that I can sleep with.  You will never get a sales pitch from me.  Hope to see you in New Orleans.

Take Care