Monday, December 6, 2010

Orange-Juice Futures Jump to Highest Price Since 2007 Amid Florida Freeze"

OJ is one of the toughest markets to trade from the outside.
Although it is a natural for this blog I always seem to be a half-tick behind.
Another constraint is that juice is less trend-following than the grains or metals so I could be posting a buy at the same time the computers are tripping a sell. Which wouldn't do anybody any good.

Looking ahead, I'll have some ideas on how to trade the developing drought in the southeast that may include FCOJ but will be less interesting than "Trading Places".

We'll also have posts on the Arctic Oscillation and La Nina, which are freezing folks in Europe (literally) and adding to the chances of Florida freezes. 
Here's the story from Bloomberg:

Orange-juice futures rose to the highest since May 2007 on concern that freezing weather may harm groves in Florida, the world’s second-biggest grower.

Temperatures in parts of central Florida, the state’s largest growing region, may fall to 29 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 2 Celsius) tomorrow morning, said David Salmon, a meteorologist at Weather Derivatives in Belton, Missouri. Temperatures would need to touch 25 degrees to “start doing some damage to the fruit,” he said. Orange-juice prices jumped 10 percent in four sessions.

“It’s all weather-related concerns,” said Jodi Timmons, a vice president at Global Commodity Futures LLC in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “We have some pretty cold temperatures forecast for the later part of this week."...MORE