Many will watch the market continue to rise, and will watch it fall, also. If you have sales on the books that will earn you a profit, do not fret. The worse thing to do is to chase lost potential profits by entering into bad trades. Big Bob Utterbach made the statement that sometimes selling on the board, and being exposed to margin calls is a positive thing...it makes you keep asking yourself "am I sure I am right?"
I got bullish several times this past year, but also got spooked just as many times and ended up forward contracting as much as my crop insurance protected. I knew I had good crops in the field, thought I had great crops. In the end, they were just good, but my 2010 and 2011 will be the most profitable years of my life and I am happy. We were flooded here in September, and I think that made me think how fragile growing crops actually is, and how I did not want to be looking at having to replace forward contracted crops at a loss. So I actually did not sell anything on the wild rallies, yet.
I have a target of $7 for the remaining old crop corn, and $15 for old crop soybeans to make further sales. I think this is one of those opportunities that doesn't come along too often. I have new crop corn targets of $6 cash, and $14.50 for soybeans. With normal yields, this will net me a fantastic number for my operation, and I will take the bird in hand if the market offers it. Maybe I will wait too long, and take $3 and $7. I guess I feel the risk/reward ratio is tilted towards holding at this point. If the calender says May 15th, I will start thinking differently. I sold too much too cheap in 2008 and never sold a single bushel for anywhere near a good price. I would be embarrassed to even state what I sold corn for. But I ended up paying my bills, and even bought another farm when the market finally crashed. I guess I did collect on crop insurance big time, and also rode some winning hedge postions down. So I probably added a solid buck to all my grain sales. It is all such a gamble these days.
