"New Threat to Farmers: The Market Hedge"

"New Threat to Farmers: The Market Hedge," see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/business/21cnd-commodity.html.

Part of the article:

"But Mr. Grieder’s days on the farm in Carlock, Ill., are getting even longer. He now has to keep a closer eye on the derivatives markets in Chicago, trying to hedge his risks so that he knows how much he will be paid in the future for crops he is planting now. And the financial tools he uses to make such bets are getting more expensive and less reliable.

In what little free time he has, Mr. Grieder attends Illinois Farm Bureau meetings to join other frustrated farmers who are lobbying officials in Chicago and Washington to fix a system that was designed half a century ago to reduce uncertainty for food producers but is now increasing it."

The very high volatility discussed in this article is probably a sign of very important peaking action, which is the case for most commodities.

Notice for gold that Dennis Gartman has turned bearish (``We are abandoning our long held bullish outlook on gold this morning,'' Gartman wrote in his U.S.-based daily Gartman Letter today. `` It has bounced today and we shall sell that bounce and exit entirely.'' ) and Roland Watson (http://www.321gold.com/editorials/watson/watson042108.html) is discussing a potentially very important peak/cycle high. Here's another gold Bear, see http://biz.yahoo.com/tm/080422/17122.html?.v=3.

Now the subject of shorts/hedge funds harming the junior gold stocks. This is an absurd contention. Most shorts are trading short term, and, they obviously trade at different times just as longs do. When one short is entering a trade another might be exiting the same stock. Short selling is simply the opposite of trading long. In 99.99% of cases it has no deleterious effect on a stock, any more than a long selling does.

If short selling hurts junior gold stocks then so does selling by longs. No one should ever sell! Many gold writers should either get religion (do REAL technical analysis/market timing) or retire.

.......http://www.JoeFROCKS.com/ .