The farm blog you linked is particularly telling.

Art, thank you--you are a tremendous help to a grain newbie like myself.

In my chart work tonight on the grains, I was struck by the extremely wide ranges, primarily in the RSI, but also the MACD--and this is on the hourly and above.  I mean, those suckers rock and roll!  Is this typical, or is this more a recent development?  

Normally, I use these oscillators a lot, but perhaps they are of less value in the grains?  Thanks!

Dirk, I hope you're joking.  Because if our microscopic efforts to make a buck in the futures markets are somehow sleazy, then I really don't know where to start...

Was an interesting re-living of the last 5 or so years.  Had to laugh though when I heard this characterisation:

"I'm a bank and generally speaking I don't take risks"

Loving the steady rise.  Need to sleep soon so taking a little profit now.  The rest can ride till Tipperary.

Rico,

Charts are usually fine in the grains, like last year we had a more normal supply/demand type rally, but what we have now is a weather market, extremely volatile 20c up/down. These suckers are trading the chance of a rain in a 10 day forecast. Also, OI down from a year ago, less liquidity due to MFG fallout and 21 hour trading. HFT making it hard on the small trader, getting stopped out in the overnights on thin volume. Hard to get a gap in the charts with the 21 hour trading, Sunday nights the only real chance. I don't try to trade every day, but look for obvious overbought/oversold situation to scalp. You've got to watch the weather reports. Like I've said before, weather is the trump card, charts, the dollar, macros, all take a back seat. Risky holding a position overnight, much less a weekend.

We are seeing a drought in the corn belt that is being compared to 1988 or 1980.

Crop size is getting smaller. Huge acres this year was expected to be a year for US to rebuild our corn stocks. Not going to happen with yields now expected to be around 146 bpa, USDA was using 166. Based on emails I get and other sources, this crop is getting smaller, with the heat now starting to move north into areas that had been looking good. Demand will suffer with these higher flat prices.

Dirk, the market's job is to ration a limited supply of grain. Higher prices will slow the demand from certain sectors, ethanol plants may sell out their inventory to a feeder, feeders will look for off grade wheat and other alternative grains to feed. The job of the market is also to encourage the farmer to increase his acres next year, to change his crop mix.  

I'm leaving early today and will spend tomorrow with my grandkids on the lake.

Ya'll have a good holiday tomorrow.

Grain markets close at noon today, reopen 9:30AM Thursday. No electronic trade Wednesday night.

you can thank the speculators for the affordable cup of coffee in your avatar.

http://mises.org/daily/4466

"

Yet the truth of the matter is that, far from causing starvation and famines, it is the speculator who prevents them. And far from safeguarding the lives of the people, it is the dictator who must bear the prime responsibility for causing the famine in the first place. Thus, the popular hatred for the speculator is as great a perversion of justice as can be imagined. We can best see this by realizing that the speculator is a person who buys and sells commodities in the hope of making a profit. He is the one who, in the time-honored phrase, tries to "buy low and sell high."

But, what does buying low, selling high, and making large profits have to do with saving people from starvation?

"