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| More and more lately I have been paying attention to John Roach and trying to sell small bits when he hits sell signals. I've tried a whole host of market advisers over the last 25 years and none seem to do as well as he does by picking small multiple tops instead of trying to identify major trends.
That said we sold corn for off the combine last fall in the $2.80's and then into the $3.20 range for Dec and Jan delivery. Still got about 25% of 06 production unpriced in the bin.
Soybeans we sold some off the combine that we could not store on farm for the low $6.00's Held everything else. Sold 6000 bu a couple weeks ago on one of Roach's sell points at $7.10. Still have about 60% of 06 left to do something with. We only keep one bin of beans because we can normally get more from storing corn than we can beans.
Have not sold anything for 07 yet. Getting close to starting. Dave I know you say not to let past mistakes change your mind, but you do need to be aware of seasonal trends and those point to the April, May, June time frame as being a good time to sell. I would say that maybe late March has been moving up and June has been fading in my opinion lately. My own personal opinion is there will be a LOT of volatility in the market until we get the corn in the ground and see what the weather is starting out like.
Are we going to push prices too high and have them come down too much? Very likely. It's not like it's never happened before that way. High prices cure high prices.
I saw Friday where it was quoted that the funds are now long 289,000 contracts of corn. That is many times more than any record amount that they have done previously. That scares me. It tells me that when the funds start selling there could be no bottom to where the market might go in the short term. Don't kid yourself. Ethanol has helped prices, but the reason we have prices north of $4 on corn is because of the funds and speculators. The reason we have bean prices north of $8 is because corn is so high and there is competition for the acres.
As for our crops this year. We are normally a 50/50 mix or there abouts depending on how individual fields work out. We were long on beans last year because we had some pivots blow over in a spring storm and decided against planting corn under them if we didn't know we'd have them back up. Good decision since they didn't run until mid August. In our 500 acres of river bottom land that is 20 miles from home we go all or none so we spend less time on the road. That was naturally going to have us raising more corn this year, but we will also go back c on c with probably 350 acres of our upland depending on the spring. I'd plant all corn if I thought I could get it done on time.
For us the numbers are too far apart to make beans a serious threat. Even when you consider the extra cost of corn vs beans and the extra cost and short yields of c on c vs beans the corn still wins out big. With conservative numbers we think corn is $60 to $80 better than beans and if we have good conditions it might be a lot more than that. We have no problems with FSA going c on c, but we would if were were thinking about beans on beans because of erosion. Even notill beans on beans are a big no no. For us to back off extra corn at $4 we'd have to have something in the $11 range on beans and they are a long way from that right now. | |
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marketing club update
