Ned W Schmidt CFA's Contributions

200 million bushels of corn suddenly disappear. Could the mystery of the disappearing corn be rich material for Erle Stanley Gardner? Probably not.

That North America is to have a bumper corn harvest this coming Fall seems to be well known. U.S. corn harvest in September/October is expected to be almost 30% above the drought-reduced crop of last year.

Our Magnificent Seven of Grains are perhaps not as exciting as those in the Seven Samurai or the cinematic classic The Magnificent Seven(Yul Brynner, 1960), but they are also essential to the survival of the world “village.”

Does management of Shuanghui International Holdings understand the future better than most? Or maybe, the Street and its army of overpaid analysts and gurus never understand the future.

Investors rely on indices to help understand how a market is moving, and perhaps even how it might move in the future. Technical analysis of a market, for example, is only possible due to market indices. How else would we assess what might be happening in a market? If an index is not properly constructed, that whole effort may prove fruitless.

Let us start by remembering the most important aspect of Agri-Commodities. They are not produced in a factory. Corn, today’s example, is produced by placing a seed in dirt with the proper amount of water and nutrients.

Breakfast is said to be the most important meal of the day. Thus far in 2013 breakfast has been not only that, but one of the better investments. The oats in that bowl of hardy cereal, as shown in the chart below, have been a star performer.

Our headline came from the T-shirt of a young soccer player. Her opinion of coming in second in a tournament was quite clear.

No, we do not have the answer to that age old question, and nor do we plan on writing any further about the collapse of AAPL. We do know that when it comes to prices, the chicken came first this time.

All us crazy Gold bugs are ready to accept the apology of gurus and strategists that have filled the airways and internet with the unrelenting drivel on buying paper equities over the past two decades.

Apples are, according to many nutritionists, good for us. However, one has to be sure to choose the right ones as AAPL has demonstrated in recent months. AAPL, despite the Street’s claim of working its way toward $1,000 by now, has fallen hard from the tree.

To date seems only one group truly loves the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. Largely, that group is comprised of bankers and bond dealers that profit from selling bonds to the Federal Reserve. Bernanke and the bond dealers have become BFF, Best Friends Forever.

Beef prices are moving higher for a variety of reasons. The falling prices of this Summer set up conditions that would lead to higher prices. That decline in beef prices during the Summer was due to continued liquidation of the cattle herd as a result of dry conditions and herd reductions at feed lots as feed grain costs rose to unprofitable levels.

J. Wellington Wimpy was always one of our favorites. The guy was somewhat of a gourmet as his favorite food was hamburgers. He was also a pal of Popeye, an individual addicted to spinach.