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“When the United States sneezes, the world catches a cold.” This saying reflects the dominance of the US markets, and with it comes the gift of producing the “world’s reserve currency.” However, the rise of digital currencies and competitors to the dominant US dollar is becoming a daily conversation. Governments worldwide desire the benefits that […]

We can always count on the government for a few things, including surprise that their policies led to negative outcomes, fixing those decisions by throwing massive amounts of new money at the problem they created, and finally blaming others for the mess that occurred. Inevitably, “the fix” will cause another issue in the future, but […]

Rising interest rates claimed their first big victim last week. The stunning collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which was the 16th largest bank in the United States, as recently as last Wednesday took two days of relentless outflows before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) stepped in to shut them down. The lender, known […]

Commentary provided by Chad Burlet of Third Street AG Investments A handful of key inputs combined make February a bearish month for agricultural futures. Corn, wheat, soybeans, soybean meal, and soybean oil all closed lower for the month. After making their highs mid-month, all the nearby contracts made their lows today, the last day of the month. […]

“A politician’s first goal of governing is to get re-elected. It is also the second goal. Everything else comes after that.” While seemingly trite, this phrase was repeated by my professor throughout my business school class on strategy in non-market environments. I often think about this concept as our leaders consistently make decisions contrary to […]

Empires rise and fall. This often happens slowly and then quickly. In hindsight, we can identify critical events that should have raised alarm bells but did not. So, like asset bubbles that can crash an economy, identifying the next catalyst can be difficult. But perhaps the mounting debt of countries like the United States, most […]

Commentary provided by Chad Burlet of Third Street AG Investments By recent standards, January was a relatively quiet month for agricultural futures. Volatility trended lower for corn, wheat, and soybeans, and their monthly trading ranges were near the lowest of the past year. The top three global issues were the same as last month: 1) dryness in […]

Investors flock to high Sharpe ratio managers on sites like IASG.com for a good reason. They display an uncanny ability to put up positive numbers almost every month. Option sellers seem to do this better than anyone, and they stand out when looking through hundreds of managers. If this one marker told the whole story, […]

All economies go through fairly predictable patterns as they go through a business cycle. In simple terms, we go from expansion to peak, contraction, and trough. The depths of this drop vary based on both predictable and unpredictable factors. Let us look at some quantifiable factors as well as some wild cards that can impact […]

With the crude oil markets now trading well below where it was before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, observers may be forgiven for thinking that the consumer has won, meaning the producer has lost. Higher pump prices and the consumer’s weaker purchasing power certainly held back demand growth to only +1.85 million barrels per day […]

Commentary provided by David Zelinski of Opus Futures. Happy New Year to all! I’m excited to get off to a great start in 2023, but before discussing the outlook, I want to spend a quick minute discussing 2022. Our program was off to a strong start in the first half of 2022, but profits were harder […]

The English expression “May you live in interesting times” is claimed to be based on an ironic Chinese curse as most of us would prefer to live fairly peacefully. While some variety is nice, this year, it felt a bit more like the perfect storm of calamity. We covered many events throughout the year, but […]

Commentary provided by David Zelinski of Opus Futures. I struck a bullish tone toward corn and soybean markets in last month’s commentary. Part of the bullishness was due to the recent (at that time) news of a breakdown in the Ukraine export corridor. We now know that the Russians backed down very quickly from their harsh […]