Monday, February 23, 2015

"Hedge funds raise bullish bets on ags for first time in 2015"

It's probably just frazzled nanny's in Greenwich telling the kids to go play.
Corn 385-6 down 7-2; wheat 503 down 4 cents.
From Agrimoney:
Hedge funds' unbroken bearish shift in bets on agricultural commodities in 2015 ended with the biggest swing bullish in positioning in 11 months, led  by soybeans, cotton and sugar.
Managed money, a proxy for speculators, raised its net long position in futures and options in the top 13 US-traded agricultural commodities by more than 85,000 contracts in the week to last Tuesday, according to data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulator.
It was the first time in seven weeks that hedge funds had raised their net long position in agricultural commodities
And the increase in the net long - the extent to which long positions, which profit when values rise, exceed short bets, which benefit when prices fall - was the biggest since March last year....MORE

Also from Agrimoney:
Russia. Ukraine grains 'badly affected by winterkill'

Winter grains in parts of Russia and Ukraine "appear to be considerably affected by frost kill", in contrast with crops in the European Union which are "generally in good shape"....MORE 
That's a bit earlier than we were looking for with the throwaway line in Wednesday's "'Warren Buffett Dumps ExxonMobil…For Good Reason?' (XOM; DE)":
...Fellow Murdochians, MoneyBeat are reporting Warren is buying Deere.
Probably early barring a hard freeze in Ukraine this spring.