I am a part of the team which is responsible for management and hedging of commodities exposures. Some say corporates are good only in following advice from banks or brokerages. I do agree corporates do not have market insight of a bank. But here is a problem. It is not bank or broker or a hedge fund that has biggest risk that markets will go against them. These guys always have an option to do nothing and wait for a better trading opportunity where as we don't. We have to continue to purchase commodities, spend currencies for daily business. Such company is always exposed to changes to market price even if it decides not to hedge. In fact my company has probably one of the biggest short commodities portfolio in the world. Managing such risk effectively is a challenge. It is like being between a rock and a hard place. You get your behind kicked all the time be senior management, whether it was a missed opportunity to hedge or hedge that turned to be out of the money. Critics will say if you lost money on your hedge then you probably bought it cheaper on physical market. let's face it, nobody wants to loose money, full-stop.

So I do not have an option to do nothing as I am always in the position (short in this case). I think people like me have higher motivation to earn positive return on their portfolio then other players. In fact my intention is to bring hedging to a performance benchmark of proprietary trading.

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Thursday, August 26, 2010

History does repeat itself... or it doesn't? PART2

In the end history does repeat itself...

With dreadful economic data coming out from the world's biggest economy, markets managed to pull a gain yeserday. Still not sure whether economic data is to get better or this is Q.E. (quantitative easing) expectations. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, all the bulls, please switch to the first gear as temporary bottom is in place, what is more important stop levels are known. Lets see what is going to work out of this rally. I do remain a bear over the long term, but feels like this one still has a potential. One thing I learned is that I never should underestimate weak dollar... Currencies led the rally and looks like commodities are catching up:

Oil has put a daily bullish reversal I was looking for. And we're back into the channel (yet move upwards still is a corrective one in the overall bear market):


Copper has found some support at 200d moving average as expected. Overall, visually, copper consolidations normally are continuation patterns:


Dollar index is being squeezed between 11d and 50d moving averages, so something has to give up, and if the trend of the last days continues we will see a move towards 200d:


1040 area in S&P looks to be a good support:


As I said stop loss levels are know, lets see what is going to work out of this one.

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