I was told once that getting beaten up once was a good way of learning how to avoid getting beaten up again.
But I don’t have a clue about
how to end the beating I’m taking in the Canola Commodity Challenge.
That is the web-based commodity trading game promoted by the Manitoba and Saskatchewan Canola Growers Associations. It is at www.canolachallenge.ca.
As canola prices are relentlessly hammered down, I’m seeing myself falling deeper into a hole, wondering if the market will ever rise back to those lofty heights of mid-October, when the challenge began, and when I snootily smirked at the idea of marketing any canola at that atrocious price.
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As it turns out, the folks who started selling their canola then are far, far ahead of today. We who hung on are the dummies getting smacked around by the market.
I’m taking a particularly brutal smacking, because I haven’t marketed a single tonne yet.
But what did we do wrong?
No analyst I found predicted canola would descend after harvest. There was generally expected to be a post-harvest improvement of both futures and basis, and possibly a winter strengthening.
“Usually that works,” one analyst told me last week, and then laughed about my embarrassing predicament with the challenge.
“No one expected this,” reassured another one of my sources.
But some folks figure out something early, because the challenge’s website shows that an M. Daalder in Alberta or British Columbia has marketed some canola for $261.05 per tonne, an N. Sabourin of Manitoba has locked in some portion for $258.16, and a T. Mckee of Saskatchewan has pegged $262.53.
The question now is what do I do? Do I start locking in portions of my 1,000 tonnes? Do I look for the basis to make up for the futures price? Do I sell it all, admit defeat and hide?
I’m not sure.
But as a contrarian and a masochist, I think I’ll stretch out this abuse a bit longer. I’ll reassure myself that with everyone saying there’s no way but down, a rally is sure to break out.
I’ll place my hopes and prayers on a biblical scale crop disaster in
Brazil. And I’ll take comfort from one technical analyst’s prediction that canola prices are set for a big upside breakout, regardless of the glutted market.
I’m willing to go down with the good ship Canola, if need be. I’ll have a lot of company.
