Tag Archives Commodities

I’ve always despised potpourri. Can’t stand the smell of the stuff. It smells to me like junky gift shops, pastel floral patterns and fustiness. And it seems like a bunch of things that just don’t smell good together. Too many contrasting scents colliding. Perhaps that’s what this blog entry will be: a stenchiferous bouquet of […] Read more

Here are a few more scraps of analysis about 2011 crop and commodity prices: Barclays Capital: Corn in 2011 is the best bet among the big crops, backed by a “slew of fundamentals.” But crops in general look firm, the global bank said, and commodities in general have lots more room to rise, if the […] Read more

Well, I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have had time to digest all that stupefying turkey and diabetes-inducing baking. I have gained in girth and decreased in Merriness. So, I’m ploughing through a pile of end-of-year outlook sessions I’ve collected and recorded since the middle of December, and thought I’d share simple […] Read more

With only a day to Christmas Eve, it seems crass to talk about the markets, prices, money. Anything serious seems out of place. And everyone’s trying to bribe Santa by being nice. (This is the time of year when even opposition members have trouble being brought to criticize the governments they want to replace. A […] Read more

Christmas can be a stressful time for many, especially if their lives aren’t as happy and fulfilling as they had hoped they would be. This is a time of year when the joyfulness of the season clashes with often much less joyful real world concerns – something that keeps the counsellor in the office next […] Read more

Have you farmers out there been naughty or nice? I hope the answer is “Nice,” because Santa’s all set up to deliver the most wonderful present a farming business can receive: MONEY. But this is no gift card from a store you don’t like to shop at, but cash in the marketplace. The markets couldn’t […] Read more

It’s terribly vexing to be a southeastern Australian farmer looking at what was- two months ago – a near-perfect crop come in as a drastically downgraded crop after harvest time rains. It’s also terribly vexing to be a prairie farmer with malting barley in the bin hearing about the situation in Ozzieland, reading about the […] Read more

Not a lot of farmers are going to be crying about the plight of the General or the K, but their situation shows the flip-side of the good times farmers are experiencing with crop prices. Today General Mills came in with quarterly results that fell beneath analysts’ expectations. The reason the company cited: higher crop […] Read more

Is crude oil just a measure of energy demand? Do rising gold prices just represent inflation fears? Do rising copper prices always mean construction workers are likely to have a busy year? Do falling bond yields signify deflation anxiety? And how do any of those questions provide answers that mean anything for crop prices? That’s […] Read more

Today I’m thinking about diarrhea, chicken wings and boredom. Let’s tackle them one-by-one, in reverse order: BOREDOM: That’s how the ag markets reacted today to a minimally-surprising USDA supply and demand report. Here’s how a mid-day CME Group market repot summed up the USDA impact on soybeans: “The USDA’s supply/demand report this morning was considered […] Read more