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John Roach's DAILY GRAIN MARKETING PLAN

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Travels

After a few weeks of traveling across Iowa and Illinois, we have to look at the calendar to see what day it is and where we are suppose to be. The meetings continue to generate tremendous support and interest while bringing forward many questions about our industry and your own farm related questions.

Today we are in Ottawa, Illinois hosting a roundtable meeting at the Hampton Inn starting at 9:00am.

Good news for those near Mason City! We have rescheduled the public meeting for next month at the same location. Hopefully a date in mid March is safe but who knows – I remember the winter of 72’.

“Rescheduled” Commodity Marketing Seminar

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

North Iowa Area Community College

Beem Forum

500 College Drive

Mason City, IA 50401

2 p.m. – 4 p.m. CST

Open to the public, $10.00 at the door

Bring a friend to one of our open public seminars if you are a subscriber to our Daily Grain Plan. If your friend signs up, we will extend your subscription 2 months free. We have found the best way to help your fellow farmers with marketing is to get them started with our Daily Grain Plan.

We have plenty of room at our public seminars but many of the round table meetings we scheduled have filled up. We will no longer list those that are sold out and are sorry we cannot accommodate everyone. Please note those with space still available. We are very pleased with the very positive reactions we have received to both the round table and public seminars.

We will have the PowerPoint presentations used at this week’s meetings posted to our website in a day or two, so you will be able to see what we presented. We will let you know when they are posted. Meanwhile the presentation I used on the cruise is available at: http://www.roachag.com/

presentations

At our meetings we present our Roach Ag market outlook, a review of how Sell Signals have worked over the past 6 years, how to use Sell Signals better, and suggestions on how to best invest your risk management dollars. No preregistration is required for public meetings except for the one in Peoria. Call us at 800-622-7628 if you have any questions! Cost is $10.00, payable at the door.

Public Seminars:

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Free courtesy of Peoria County Farm Bureau, Corn Belt Marketing, Farm Credit, and FBFM Please call 800-655-3380 to book your reservation!

Expo Gardens

1601 W Northmoor Road, Peoria, IL

From 8:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Parkland Community College

Tony Noel Agricultural Technology Center

2400 W. Bradley Avenue, Champaign, IL

From 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Travelers Inn

1709 E Lincoln Road, Kokomo, IN

From 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Roundtable Seminars:

In addition to our public seminars, we are also holding small group Round Table Discussions. The most important aspect of our Round Table Discussions is just that. They are discussions. Our meetings are designed to be free flowing to really help you understand how to improve your marketing and crop risk management on the farm. These meetings will be limited to 15 participants to stimulate the exchange of ideas. We have space available at the following locations. The cost is $100.00 per person.

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Ottawa, IL

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Clinton, IL

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 – 1 Seat Left

Lincoln, IL

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Kokomo, IN

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Monticello, IL

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Lebanon, IN

Sell Signals

We have no Sell Signals in our grain markets

What you will find when reading our Daily Grain Plan is that the actual days per year we are taking action is rather small. For those that come to our seminars and work with us closely, we show you the number of Sell Signal days per year is only a few out of the entire year. Do the math. Take 4-5 Sell Signals per year times 5 days each = 20-25 days. Some years it is more and some years it could be less but the point is clear. Most of the time we sit and wait, planning and organizing.

Even the most patient sellers get antsy and end up selling grain for piece of mind or to generate cash. Always ok by us, but try to push as many of your sales to the first half of the year on our Sell Signals as possible. For those who have come to our seminars this month, we said you have at least $100+/acre of opportunity selling on our Sell Signals versus the annual average and following our advice was right 85% of time over the past 21 years. Today’s market could pay you $200-$300/acre more if volatility creeps back into our grains just as in the past 3 years.

So yes we are boring sometimes, but we find keeping a level heart rate while the world is digesting lots of heartburn keeps us sharper and more ready to take action when the Sell Signal is issued.

*We have ended our advice to get buying needs covered. We will include in our writing when to accumulate feed needs again. Corn and soybean markets have quietly moved up to our green line 20 day moving averages with soybeans the leader, breaking through the green line on Wednesday but retreating right back to the green line this morning. After a long, multi-week reset below the Roach Ag Sell Signal 25 line, prices have drifted into territory we pay close attention.

If you need to sell corn because of storage issues, go ahead because basis has improved in most areas, but buy it back in futures.

Markets

Ahead of a 3 day weekend (Presidents Day on Monday) the U.S. Dollar is trading into this morning’s overnight session very strong. Currency traders are mulling around ideas of the European Union helping out debt laden countries tied to the Euro currency. Who really wants to lend people money, let alone another country? While the noise in Europe continues without answers, the Dollar will be well supported.

Yesterdays grain markets tested the green line 20 day moving averages and failed to move higher. Instead, prices retreated back to the green line and now will look for direction. We could either move higher up off the green line or go back lower, retesting recent lows. In this territory prices are looking for direction and a change in trend.

Good news came in yesterdays Department of Labor report that first time claim for unemployment insurance dropped 40,000 in the week ending February 6 to 440,000. This beat analyst’s estimates of 465,000 by a big margin. Happy Wall street traders bought the Dow Jones up 105 points and also pushed crude oil higher offering some support to the grains but not enough to clear our green line 20 day moving average.

Strength in soybean basis has farmers asking us about soybean cash bids. Tighter stocks and very little selling pushed cash offers within 50 cents of the latest rally in some areas. The question is should you sell? With a big crop in South America upon us and our spring planting ahead of us, we don’t know how much of a rally in futures will support your cash offers. Our advice is to make the sale if you like the price and will not kick yourself otherwise. How will the sale look at the end of year? If you like it, get the sale made.

Our Daily Grain Plan will not be issued on Monday, Presidents Day. Most of us will have extra little helpers around the farm with school aged children and grandchildren having the day off. Enjoy them – they get big real quick.

These data and comments are provided for information purposes only and are not intended to be used for specific trading strategies. This commentary is written as a daily marketing tool to help farmers sell the grain they raise. Although all information is believed to be reliable, we cannot guarantee its accuracy or completeness. Commodity trading involves the risk of loss, and you should fully understand those risks before trading.

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Front Month Futures

Mar ‘10 Corn

Mar ‘10 Beans

Mar ‘10 Wheat

3.60 1/4

- 3

9.33 1/4

- 9 3/4

4.84

- 9 1/2

New Crop 2010

Dec ‘10 Corn

Nov ‘10 Beans

July ‘10 Wheat

3.96 1/2

- 2

9.16

- 6 1/2

5.11 1/2

- 9 3/4

World Markets

S&P 5001,078.47+0.96% Europe DJ Stoxx2,685.09+0.18% Japan10,092.19+1.29% Hong Kong20,268.69-0.11% China3,251.28+0.96% Taiwan7,441.84+1.10% Australia4,562.10+0.17% Singapore2,758.90+0.19% South Korea208.74-0.47% Bombay16,152.590.00Libor0.250.00

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