That's Interesting

That's Interesting...

Dad29 points out a small spike in grain futures. By "small," I mean all the way to the lock limit; by "grain," I mean every grain. Oats, wheat, corn, and soybeans.

Curious. Now, why would something like that happen?

One possibility is that somebody knows something we don't know about food supplies. Another is that someone thinks gold has topped out, and is looking for another relatively safe store of value -- something that people are going to need, no matter what happens to the values of any given currency. Given the new evidence of serious upcoming instability, new sources of reliable value stores might simply be coming to the fore.

A third option arises if we consider two remarks of D29's source:

What this means is that it is entirely possible for exactly one trade to go off at the limit price and lock trading. You're stuck with whatever position you have at that point.

If you're short and you lock-limit up the good news is that the damage stops (for that day) there.

The bad news is that there's nothing you can do about the damage, up to and including being driven into a margin call, which can bankrupt you.

So maybe all that happened here is that a George Soros-type noticed that one of his competitors was in a bad position, and closed the book on him. That's actually the least worrying scenario: a single somebody ruthlessly destroying a competitor (or 'some competitors') is far better than the beginning of an ongoing spike in basic food prices. That latter is the sort of thing that destroys governments, nations, civilizations.

It's something worth watching, and thinking about carefully, if it continues when trading reopens. So is that bank thing (see "serious upcoming instability," above).