LESSONS LEARNED:HERE ARE THE LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE BULL MARKET OF 2012 AND THE PRICE COLLAPSE OF 2013

摘要

Early this winter, I got an intriguing question from a longtime customer in Illinois. "If you could turn back the clock to September 2012 when the grain markets peaked, what would you have done differently" he asked. I am usually not one to second-guess the advice I send out. However, I couldn't resist the challenge. What could - or should - I have done differentlyTo properly answer that question, I needed to do some background research in three specific areas.First, I went back and reviewed the news during the two weeks when grain prices topped out in September 2012. During the three weeks when the grain markets put in the major high, the market news was all very bullish. It seemed like writers were in a contest to see who could throw out the highest price projections for corn and soybeans. I read several forecasts for $10 corn and even $21 soybeans. The major brokerage firms were raising their estimates of what prices would average over the next two to three years in every research report.