Thursday, January 17, 2008

Agriculture Stocks....Interesting?

Today soft commodities are moving up again. Soybeans, corn, wheat, and rice are all up across the board. Once again the soft commodity stocks are getting slaughtered, Deere down 10% (down near 20% in the past 3 days), Mosaic down near 10% (down near 30% the past week) and Potash down near 12% (down near 20% of the past few days). I own known of these (except through MOO). Finally got the break where maybe they look interesting now, especially Deere. Mosaic I thought had upside at 100 on fundamental basis but wasn't willing to touch it, at 80 seems interesting. If you are buying these though you are betting on the 2009 and 2010 planting season. 2008 is done and prices will be high and these guys will make a killing but what about 2008 and 2009? Will anything fundamentally change that corn will not be at $5 bucks a bushel anymore? That is what you have to determine. I am a broken record but we produced more corn in the U.S. since 1944, most of the country had superb planting conditions to get very high yields, and we still didn't produce enough corn to replenish stock piles. The risk at this point is regulatory I think. The idiots in Washington who came up with the ethanol push take away the incentives to produce ethanol.

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