Sunday, October 14, 2012

Today in Commodities: Good News, Bad News

Well, good and bad news. Oil was down by $1 on the close BUT on a bearish inventory report, to see this market fight back we may not get as big of a correction as we were looking for. Our first objective at $78.50 in February was hit, today’s low was $78.37 but the next target at $77 may be a stretch. We took clients out of their April $82.50/$75 put spreads at a 32% net profit. Selling has been rejected the last 3 days in natural gas with prices settling well off their intra-day lows. Clients have yet to gain any exposure and with the warmer weather in the forecast we think prices are still coming lower. We could be wrong, and if we change our minds you will know about it.

Maybe it was a good thing we did not take action getting clients short the Equity markets yet. This market is manic and if stocks trade higher it will be without our clients. My opinion is that we should be lower but my opinion really does not matter as a larger force is at work here.

Sugar is a relentless animal, we are seeing big call buying from investment houses so we stepped back in with some clients; buying the May 28/32 call spreads. Clients still hold long July/short March futures and are about where they started. Not only should warmer weather affect natural gas but I welcome warmer weather here in Florida. As I’m sure citrus farmers would as well... on that expect OJ to trade south, prices were lower by almost 3% today.

Impressive action in the metals today, our largest exposure is still in silver as we liquidated a majority of our clients' gold longs yesterday at a very minimal profit. Use the trend line from the last 3 weeks at $1120 as support in February gold with resistance at $1143 followed by $1163. Use $18.15/18.20 as support in March silver with resistance at $18.90 followed by $19.30.

Give corn another day before jumping back long aggressively. We like the idea of May and July calls... today we were looking at the May $4 and July $4.20 calls. If you noticed, what we did yesterday in corn worked perfectly; long December 2010 futures which was higher by 1′2 cents, and against that clients purchased (2) March $3.80 puts, March corn was lower by 8′4 cents today. Once corn finds some support we expect the gaps that formed in the last 2 sessions to be filled on an up move. If the KCBOT/CBOT March wheat spread moves a bit more in our clients' favor we will be looking for an exit tomorrow.

We expected a bit of a setback in Treasuries today after the jump yesterday and the market delivered. We still expect March 30-yr bonds to make their way to 118′00; clients are positioned in NOB spreads. We suggest having short exposure in long dated Euro-dollars via options and futures. A large reason we had clients in the yen was expectations of a stock market failure, and being that does not look likely in the immediate future, clients took their March 110/114 calls off at a small profit.

Clients own no lean hogs but the action today was impressive with prices gaining 3.7%. This is a market we want to gain bullish exposure on a dip but we’ve yet to have one. Live cattle ended today’s session higher by 55 ticks near their highs. We will be looking to roll out of February and move to forward months if we can approach 87 cents in the coming days.

Risk Disclosure: The risk of loss in trading commodity futures and options can be substantial. Past performance is no guarantee of future trading results.

No comments:

Post a Comment