Do you want to know a secret?

[wilagro]

agstar: Marketing seminars are designed to make you a better gambler. Trouble is that the grain companies and the other traders are dealing with a "marked deck", but they don't tell you that.

These pushes, pulls, hedges, margin calls, etc., etc., are all part of the stock market trader lexicon used by those who have lived off of the farmer for the past 100 years or so. The methods that they teach are right from the book of "LEECH" where these experts have honed their techniques. Then they have the nerve to call their techniques "secrets" and then charge you money so that you can become one of THEM (as if they will let you fully join their little club).

[charliep]

Wilagro

Would this explain why the CWB lost $326 mln on their risk management activities in 2007/08?

Curious that both Agstar77 and yourself would hold the CWB as operating the ideal market strategy. What is the CWB does and can it by applied by farmers in the open market.

I would suspect the answers would be around market discipline, using the knowledge to allocate marketable supplies to the highest priced customers, averaging sales through the year, etc. Maybe I am missing something.

Will also note that the CWB farm business representatives are working with farmers to help them use the producer payment options more effectively (Fort Saskatchewan - April 1). Perhaps the CWB is trying to share the secret of better marketing.

[pilpilsner]

So charlie,when you tell producers to buy options as a hedge on one thread and then bitch about the cwb and its hedging strategies on another,where exactly is the line of hypocrit vs good management?

Best two marketing quotes i know=

Be right sit tight

Buy low sell high

[charliep]

Perhaps you are right.

What I do know is everyone is different on this website and in your community. Having a different tools that allow individual managers to make decisions based on the needs/philosophy is a thing. My sense (in all your personas) is that you are well off/can afford to take risk. That may not apply to everyone.

But then we would have to agree with a definition of risk (which is both opportunity and negative consequences). Perhaps that is the key to the secret that is being talked about here.

[TOM4CWB]

pilpilsner,

You seem to be a CWB supporter.

It is obvious that the actual COST of a particular risk management strategy... is crytical to the determination of the decision to make a market move.

If hedging costs more 'risk' than doing nothing... and selling cash... why would you hedge?

If you can't sell cash grain... that is a whole different situation... which in turn is the real problem with the CWB ppo system... the CWB prevents transparent global cash price signals from reaching the farmgate in western Canada.

Buying options costs money... as does being a part of CWB pools. I should have the opportunity to opt out of both.

pilpilsner... how much money did your hedges cost in 2008?

Why shouldn't the CWB be forced to explain why they were so far from reaching the targets they themselves set on hedges?

[mbratrud]

pilpilsner - Sell high for that year? Decade Century? How long do you hold your grain? Do you have an infinate amount of cash and grain storage.

Be Right Sit Tight? This explains alot about how a lot of Farmers are poor Marketers.

What'r right? Do you know what the Turkey lentil crop is going to look like in 6 weeks, or if the Argentine Farmers will go on strike over Export Taxes?

Wilagro - well let me just say Alrighty then!

[pilpilsner]

Board supporter?Not quite.

Just pointing something out.

In the most volitiale marketing year ever,would you not expect hedging losses?

I wont get into what that exceptable level of loss is.

Mbratrud,i'm an active trader and stand by my quotes.

Be right,sit tight as opposed to be wrong,move quick?

You must have scratched your head till it blead when corn shot through the roof after the huge crop was taken off.

[charliep]

will note the CWB question is not about hedging losses but rather the CWB execution of their risk management program.

to separate the two parts, the CWB lost $226 mln on their discretionary trading account (page 45 of the annual report). I will let you define whether this discretionary trading (yes the CWB does use futures wilagro) was speculation or hedging. Should the CWB make the decisions on discetionary that ultimately cost farmers $10 to $15/tonne or should they left this money in farmers pockets to spend as they saw fit (which may have included options strategies).

Second issue - On the hedging losses on the producer payment options/contingency fund, total cash outflow to cover hedging activities was $467 mln (page 61). $89 mln of this fell outside the explanation of market moves and resulted in the deficit. so the question is not so about hedging losses but rather the execution of the CWB risk managment strategy and the allocation of pain in how the deficit was financed.

[TOM4CWB]

Charlie,

There is a third issue:

The CWB used the basis (that was at historic high levels) to cross subsidise PPO hedge losses. No accounting for this in the Annual Statements... so we don't have ANY accountability on what the CWB did.

…”prices offered to producers are based on nearby prices. In an adverse market,
the nearby price offered is higher than can be achieved
by hedging forward in the futures market.

Offsetting these losses were gains in basis. Once producers
have priced, they have locked in their basis levels. If the
final achieved basis of the pool is different from what
producers locked in, a gain or loss will result. The basis,
which is unhedgable, widened over the course of the
year due to the very tight world grain fundamentals that
became apparent after producers locked in their FBC/
BPC prices, resulting in a gain to the program."
..."To uphold the principle communicated to farmers that the
PPO programs will operate independently of the pool,
the board of directors has approved a policy that provides
for repayment of funds to the pools from the PPO programs
when the Contingency Fund is in a positive balance.
Repayments to the pools cannot force the Contingency
Fund into a negative position."
Page 67

Can any rational person call CWB 'risk management' a simple hedging program?

The CWB sells grain like they are 'half pregnant'. Are they hedging, speculating... or both?

I don't think even they themselves know!

[TOM4CWB]

The first CWB Annual Report quote above is from pages 61-62