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Craig Haugaard

While working toward his Agricultural Economics degree at South Dakota State University in 1977, Craig Haugaard decided to divert his student loan money before paying his tuition one semester. He bought a contract of oat futures, pocketed a quick $300, then settled up with SDSU billing. “It was magic,” Haugaard says. “At that stage of my life I didn’t think through the consequences of my actions very well. If it had gone the other way I suppose I would have had to go hat in hand to my folks and tell them that if they wanted me in college they were going to have to pony up some cash.” Investing in agricultural futures at age 20 was more than a shot in the dark for Haugaard. His father owned a futures brokerage firm, where Craig hung out and developed a passion for charting in high school. As a teenager, Craig rented a small farm where he maintained a flock of 225 sheep and half a dozen steers. It was also the home base for a commercial crop spraying business he developed. Futures trading has remained in Craig’s bloodstream ever since. He is Grain Marketing Manager at a large grain cooperative that has elevators in 15 locations, two of which house shuttle loaders capable of loading up to 110 rail cars at a time. The coop has basis traders, a hedge desk, grain accountants, grain originators, and keeps more than 30 trucks moving on a normal day. Haugaard manages it all while writing a daily commodity comments column covering corn, soybeans and wheat future for the coop. He also conducts about 20 marketing seminars a year for farmers looking for new strategies. Craig uses technical indicators (moving averages, stochastic and MACD) within a seasonal trend context to help him enter and exit trades, but fundamentals – which he lives and breathes at his day job – dominate his trading. “I am heavily involved in that world and so can’t help but have my view on a given market colored by the underlying fundamentals,” he says.
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Recent Posts

Grain Market Chatter Closing Comments1/27/2016

Posted by Craig Haugaard on Jan 27, 2016 9:29:01 PM

Closing Comments

Lynn Miller

January 27th, 2016

 

 

Corn:

Corn was on the defensive today with the nearby’s managing to close unchanged while the deferred months lost ground.  Ethanol production was down for the 2nd week in a row.  Now at 961,000 barrels/day (down 22,000 from last week)  Stocks; however, were down for the first time in a while.

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Topics: Grain Markets

Grain Market Chatter Closing Comments1/26/2016

Posted by Craig Haugaard on Jan 26, 2016 7:38:23 PM

 

Closing Comments

Lynn Miller

January 26th, 2016

 

 

Corn:

A quiet, quiet session today with no new out there perceived as ‘market moving’.  No exports today and ethanol numbers are out tomorrow.  Lack of any upward movement kept producer at selling to a minimum (at least in the US).  Most marketing targets are 15-20 cents over the current market. 

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Topics: Grain Markets

Grain Market Chatter Closing Comments1/25/2016

Posted by Craig Haugaard on Jan 25, 2016 5:31:40 PM

Closing Comments

Lynn Miller

January 25th,  2016

 

 

Food for thought: Is your condo full of beans and you want to haul corn?  Here are a couple ideas.  You can move delivered beans from Condo to free DP and free up space to pull your bin tops into the Condo space.  Or, you could look at Basis Fixing your Condo beans to make more room.  Basis fixes works good in a minimal carry or inverted market and will help you protect the current basis levels with forward levels wider.  If you have any questions, give any of us in the grain department a call, we’ll run through the pros and cons with you.

 

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Topics: Grain Markets

Grain Market Chatter Closing Comments1/22/2016

Posted by Craig Haugaard on Jan 22, 2016 9:19:22 PM

Closing Comments

Lynn Miller

January 22nd, 2016

 

 

 

Corn:

Export sales today were stellar at 1157.7 tmt WAY over the top end of the trade guess with the top three buyers being Mexico, Japan and Korea.  Offers from Asia and Argentina still undercut the US by $0.12 for Feb delivery but that has narrowed from $0.21 last week.

A good rebound in crude oil, up $2.66/barrel last I looked, helped us along today as well.  

 

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Topics: Grain Markets

Grain Market Chatter Closing Comments1/21/2016

Posted by Craig Haugaard on Jan 21, 2016 10:11:55 PM

Closing Comments

Lynn Miller

January 21st, 2016

 

A nice rally in US stocks and crude oil helped to lift the commodity market in general today. 

Corn:

Some have thought that yesterday’s buying in corn was proof that this market has run out of sellers.  We could be hopeful of that, but we continue to test the $3.69 level and fail to finish through it, finding a few sellers yet late session as producer movement stepped it up a little in the US.

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Topics: Grain Markets

Grain Market Chatter Closing Comments1/20/2016

Posted by Craig Haugaard on Jan 20, 2016 5:51:02 PM

Closing Comments

Lynn Miller

January 20th, 2016

 

 

 

Corn:

A quiet choppy trade that managed to finish a penny higher with no desire to drive this market lower when none of the bear stories out there (albeit they are few) are coming to fruition.  Funds managed to cover between 4 and 6,000 contracts of their short position, and I wonder how many of these were the reversal of long bean, short corn spreads?

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Topics: Grain Markets

Grain Market Chatter Closing Comments1/19/2016

Posted by Craig Haugaard on Jan 19, 2016 5:17:39 PM

Closing Comments

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Topics: Grain Markets

Grain Market Chatter Closing Comments 01/15/2016

Posted by Craig Haugaard on Jan 15, 2016 7:23:37 PM

Closing Comments

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Topics: Grain Markets

Grain Market Chatter Closing Comments 01/14/2016

Posted by Craig Haugaard on Jan 14, 2016 5:57:57 PM

Closing Comments

Lynn Miller

January 14th, 2016

 

 

 

Corn:

A basically unchanged market that teetered either side of unchanged was what we got today as demand stay stagnant and no we have no real supply threat out there to give us momentum.

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Topics: Grain Markets

Grain Market Chatter Closing Comments 01/13/2016

Posted by Craig Haugaard on Jan 13, 2016 5:41:33 PM

Closing Comments

Lynn Miller

January 13th, 2016

 

One concern I hear coming from the USDA report yesterday is the decrease in planted acres.  USDA shows all major crops covered 307.0 acres.  2014 total planted acres reached 313.6 that’s nearly a 4 million acre loss.  And, they say we planted 3 million less wheat acres so far.  Now we have a shortage of 7 million acres.  Do you think the American farmer will plant less acres in 2016?

 

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Topics: Grain Markets

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