Test Your Grain Market Knowledge
“Back to School with Ed Usset” is a new feature of Corn & Soybean Digest, in cooperation with Ed Usset and the Center for Farm Financial Management. Ed’s challenging and authentic quiz questions are designed to test your grain marketing knowledge, and will help you learn while having fun! Ed Usset is the author of “Grain Marketing is Simple, It’s Just Not Easy,” and is a grain marketing specialist at the University of Minnesota.
This Week's Featured Question
Back to School #38: Selling covered calls
Most options strategies used by producers involve the purchase of options, but there is a strategy that involves the sale of call options against ownership (unpriced grain in storage, or growing in the field). This is called selling a covered call because, in a rising market, your losses on the call option are covered by the increasing value of your unpriced grain. Let’s assume that you do it – with December futures trading at $3.72 per bushel, you sell a 380 December corn call for 28 cents per bushel to enhance the price of your crop developing in the field. Between now and harvest, which way would you like to see prices trend?
- a. Higher
- b. lower
- c. sideways
