Crude will close down about $1.50 on the day and about $6 off its highs intra week highs. The fact that prices did not break down and heavy buying came in below $70/barrel this correction may be close to over. Clients are still holding their May call spreads and are under water but we expect this trade to be profitable. We have NO opinion here until the dust settles. We have no long or short exposure in natural gas with clients. We started to buy June RBOB call spreads this week and will most likely be adding to this position in the coming weeks.

We expect to see a rally in Indices to start next week. That being said, we’re not saying to get long, but rather to use this rally to exit positions or to sell; ideally we get a window of 1105/1115 in the ES and SP to sell.

Whenever a company prepares for a public offering, executives have been known to spend an inordinate amount of time choosing the combination of letters that will serve as the company’s ticker and often nickname within the investment community. To many, the fixation on selecting the perfect ticker seems like an irrational obsession on par with Patrick Bateman’s affinity for business cards. But there’s some evidence to support the idea that picking a clever ticker can be worth quite a bit of money.

An academic study titled “Would A Stock By Any Other Ticker Smell As Sweet?” (PDF) examined the performance of “clever ticker” stocks such as Southwest (LUV), Internet America (GEEK), Lion Country Safari (GRRR), and Explosive Fabricators (BOOM). This study uncovered that between 1984 and 2004, “a portfolio of clever-ticker stocks would have beaten the market by a substantial and statistically significant margin, contradicting the efficient market hypothesis.” Theories on the reason for this outperformance have been all over the board. Many have written it off as a coincidence, while others posit that a cool ticker is indicative of a more relaxed management team, and perhaps a more creative and productive corporate culture.

As an agricultural product whose production is concentrated in a few key regions, Coffee is a market that lends itself well to fundamental price projection. Like many of its agricultural cousins, the harvest cycles of the coffee trees themselves creates seasonal tendencies that can be studied and potentially exploited by astute investors.

In particular, option sellers have a particularly keen interest in “seasonals” as they are not bound by the limitations of the futures trader who a) requires perfect timing and b) has to be correct on outright price direction.