Originally Posted by Discuss Thrower:
How do you guys engage in futures / forwards deals?
Lots of different options out there.
As far as I go, I typically try hedge up front (sell contracts on the board) up to my MPCI (Multi Peril Crop Insurance) guarantees. I'll push that if it's fairly close to harvest and I'm confident I have a better crop out there. The elevators will convert them to forward contracts if the basis is favorable prior to harvest. Typically, I chicken out and sign basis contracts if that is the case. A lot of times if you don't grow it (hail or whatever), it's easier to get out of a basis contract than a forward one where you have to eat shit on the whole thing.
Other options are Hedge to Arrive a the elevator. That is essentially the elevator selling the contract for you. You set the basis at a later date in which it is a forward contract.
You can also buy puts. That will keep you from making margin calls but I'm too cheap to buy the time value, which always eats your ass. Every time I've the market went against the physical and bought puts, they've yielded around half of what it would have been if I'd sold contracts. If market goes up, sure there wouldn't have margin calls, but the premium is unrecoverable. Every time I buy puts instead of selling contracts, I'm pissed off about it.
I try to keep most things on the board because I'm chickenshit. However this year, I'd have gotten my shit wrecked on wheat. I zeroed out A LOT of acres with hail and would have had to pay a lot if I hadn't kept it on the board.
I've also on occasion sold the physical grain and bought it back on the board to stop storage and essentially retain ownership. That's technically not a hedge, but there is feasibly little chance you'd get caught by the IRS. (speculative losses are limited to 3,000. Hedging losses are not limited)
Like I said, there are a heck of a lot of ways to do it, but that's largely what I do. [Reply]
Saw IQ down 13% to $19.28 in after hours trading as a result of 3Q reporting. Yikes! There was a few times reading this thread I felt I was getting sucked in on the allure of the "Chinese Netflix" and the early gains after its IPO date. And here we're what...7 months later and it's fallen almost all the way back down to where it started?
I'm usually not an impulse buyer. Almost all of my retirement is strictly in vanguard target date funds. But I remember last year reading this thread about US Steel after it dropped by 50% and almost pulling the trigger. And then kicking myself over the next 6 months when it went back up to the mid-40's after being around 20 at that time. I guess the moral of the story is there's a yin for every yang and more often than not it's better to just look for the solid long play than the easy quick buck. [Reply]
Originally Posted by blake5676:
Saw IQ down 13% to $19.28 in after hours trading as a result of 3Q reporting. Yikes! There was a few times reading this thread I felt I was getting sucked in on the allure of the "Chinese Netflix" and the early gains after its IPO date. And here we're what...7 months later and it's fallen almost all the way back down to where it started?
The Chinese market as a whole has dropped quite a lot. IQ had 89% paid subscriber growth. That's good they just lost more than was projected. It's not even all that cheap at 5.5x revenue for a Chinese company that's losing money. That number will come down some tomorrow. It is interesting as it seems their content is popular
Netflix had a crazy first mover advantage in that all of their should be competitors didn't move at all. They didn't want to lose their lucrative cable model. IQ has a ton of competition and a nation not used to paying crazy cable prices. [Reply]