Grains, Fibers & Foods Fundamentals - Who's the Best Advisor? (Aug. 20, 1999)

"Hi there - I am an old subscriber/member of CTCR from many years ago, and I recently renewed membership this month.
I would like to get your opinion on trading advisors/newsletters for agricultural futures, primarily grains, but also meats, foods, fibers, etc.
Some background: I have been trading futures in 22 markets since 1987 very actively, and have been quite profitable. I developed my own system in 1989, custom-written in "C", historically tested on 35 markets over 20 years, and have been using it ever since, in all markets I trade (a single set of parameters for all markets). The system is bascially a breakout-oriented, long term trend following system. While this is basically a good system, it of course does poorly in trendless markets, and can generate pretty big drawdowns at times. I prefer to trade long term, large moves, holding positions for many weeks or even many months at a time, using only end of day data and signals.
I have been watching the last year's action in grains, fibers, and foods with some interest as prices hit historic lows, and am tempted to trade these markets with a different approach, both to take advantage of what I think is a major opportunity in these marets for next year, as well as to diversify my trading methodology and thereby hopefully reduce overall account drawdown. I am thinking that a fundamentals oriented approach to these markets would be a good approach and would counter some of the drawdowns I get in financial futures since the methodology would not be corellated with what I use in my system.
I would like to get input from, and most likely directly trade, the recommendations of a seasoned agricultural futures trading service that has a really good 5 year or more track record. From recent issues of CTCR, it looks to me like Bill Gary's CIS service might be the best performing agricultural market service, at least based on the results for 1998 and the last trailing 12 months.
1) I would be very interested to know your opinion on this however - is CIS the best choice for this set of markets?
2) Also, do you know if there is any information from independent sources such as CTCR on how he has performed over a much longer period, say 5 years?
3) Are there any advisory services that you think might be a better fit (or just as good as) for the trading style and objectives that I have here? " J.M.

Editor-in-Chief Courtney Smith: Thanks for the thoughtful letter.
To trade agricultural markets I think that Bill Gary's CIS Price Perceptions is almost a must. The information and insights in it are superb. His track record through the years is good. He has been the number one newsletter (in terms of percent return on "reasonable" margin) twice in the last five years. However, he has also had some poor years. Still, I find the information to be well worth the subscription price. I recommend that you also look at seasonals if you are going to trade the agriculturals. I believe that seasonals provide some excellent information about what trends will develop and how powerful they will be. For information on seasonals, I recommend Jake Bernstein's MBH Letter and/or Steve Moore's Moore Research Letter. Moore has a better track record than the MBH Letter so that might be in favor of Moore. However, they look at seasonality in two different ways so I suggest looking at both of them before deciding. They both have useful information.

• If a guru's profits fall, does anyone hear? (Aug. 19, 1999)
• Latest Issue of CTCR Newsletter: Review of OptionVue 5 (Aug. 15, 1999)
• The (non) Existence of Frank Thomas (Aug. 14, 1999)
• Commodities Contracts, Funds & Hybrids (Aug. 13, 1999)
• Latest Issue of CTCR Newsletter: The Statistics Section (Aug. 12, 1999)
• Who is Mikey? (Aug. 9, 1999)
• 
  
  

$10 Sale Issue: Interview with John Bollinger, former Chief Market Analyst on the Financial News Network. An article by Bruce Babcock on The Absolute Bare Bones Root Cause Reasons People Fail at Futures Trading. Also including reviews of TechnoFundamental Trading by Phillip Gotthelf, the S&P Cherry Picker Day Trading System by David L. Wright, Supercharts 3-CD software from Omega Research. (More...)

 

Aug 24 - 4:09 pm Bloomberg News.

Speech to Futures West Conference Oct 1-3

More...

Bashar Azzouz/Trading Systems
Money-making traders, discussion of a key money management strategy for trading systems and review of OptionVue 5! System test: Using Stops with the 40/20 System. And of course, all of our regular features like the centerfold of tracked advisors, the CTCR index, the mini-review listings and more! (order) (more)