In this episode of The Derivative, Jeff Malec sits down with Jeff Apel, principal at Wharton Capital Management, to dive deep into the current cattle market. With beef prices hitting near-record highs, Apel shares his extensive experience from the trading floor to today’s futures markets, explaining the complex dynamics behind rising meat prices. From drought impacts and herd sizes to consumer demand and seasonal trends, this conversation offers a comprehensive look at what’s driving the beef market and what investors and consumers can expect in the coming months. SEND IT!
_____________________________
_____________________________
From the Episode:
RCM Blog post: Beef Is the New Egg? Why Meat Prices Are Skyrocketing
RCM Blog post: The picture from Space that shows why Commodities are non-correlated to the Stock Market
Check out the complete Transcript from this week’s podcast below:
Beef Prices at All-Time Highs: Inside the Meat Markets with Jeff Apel of Wharton Capital
Jeff Apel 00:00
The retail prices is at or near all time. Record high. Demand has held up Excellent. You know, the consumer hasn’t really cracked when it comes to beef. Yet, production has been low. Slaughter is down quite a bit on the year there, and so that’s led into this, this higher retail price.
Jeff Malec 00:28
Welcome to The Derivative by our RCM Alternatives, send it!
Jeff Apel 00:31
And this is Jeff April, principal at Wharton Capital Management here to talk about our program and the price of beef and cattle prices here on the derivative.
Jeff Apel 00:50
How are you, Jeff Good. How are you doing? Jeff
Jeff Malec 00:53
good. Jeff and Jeff back again. You’re out in the western suburbs, Chicago,
Jeff Apel 01:01
uh, Mo Kina, mokino, all right, Tinley, Tinley Park,
Jeff Malec 01:06
okay, most of the way towards Kankakee.
Jeff Apel 01:10
Well, it’s about a 45 minutes from Kankakee. We’re north of Kankakee,
Jeff Malec 01:15
mokina, I’m sure I’ve played in a baseball or softball tournament there. Um, so start us out how you got in the business when you joined Wharton, all that good stuff. Give us some background. Oh, boy. I
Jeff Apel 01:28
got in the business probably in 1998 after coming out of college, started in the cattle pit. My dad was a trader in there. Kind of got me started. I moved into floor brokerage around 2003 and ended up partnering up with Bob Wharton on some floor business that we had together. And then, as we saw the market move into electronic trading, we decided to, you know, try to start up a CTA and leverage some of our contacts and experience into that space. And that was in Bob started in 2011 and then in 2014 I joined up with him.
Jeff Malec 02:13
Nice. Give us some So was your dad a local, or he was trading for himself? He
Jeff Apel 02:18
was, he was a personal trader. Yeah, he was a local. I guess you could say he was a floor broker for a long time, and then a local. He probably started on the floor of the CME in about 1968 so he was in, he was in the egg egg pit, and then moved into the cattle when it started, when that contract became, you know, the new, new hot thing, right? First, first, live deliver contract, that kind of stuff,
Jeff Malec 02:47
and talk a little bit. So he was filling paper, he was trading his own account. And then when you got there, doing the same thing, all right,
Jeff Apel 02:55
me and you could, you could do both back then you could, you could fill paper and trade for your own account in that
Jeff Malec 03:02
pit for my buddy George. Tell, tell the audience what fill in paper means.
Jeff Apel 03:08
Oh, filling paper, well that’s like if, if somebody gives you an order, a customer calls up and says, Buy 10 August cattle. Well, then you write it on an order, and you walk in, and there’s a whole group of people in there. You say, What? What’s here in August cattle and and they give you the bid offer and you buy them, right? So you’re
Jeff Malec 03:25
physically filling, filling orders, basically filling out your four customers.
Jeff Apel 03:31
Yeah, really called execution now, yeah,
Jeff Malec 03:34
right. It’s the computer you were the human computer in the middle of the bill.
Jeff Apel 03:40
It’s called execution. So, yeah, back
Jeff Malec 03:42
in the days, that was the kind of delineation. I guess a lot of people did both, but there was paper filling, brokers, guys filling orders, and then ones who didn’t do any of that and just traded for their own account, correct? Remember both? And then what were the meats were like, notoriously illiquid back in those days,
Jeff Apel 04:01
yeah, I mean, they had low open interest for a long, long time is, you know, it was, there wasn’t a great story for a lot of years. And there were other other products that people were more interested in had a bigger volume, bigger open interest, you know, the s and PS or euro, dollars, or something like that. And so, yeah, they were, you know, they’re always kind of illiquid. I mean, they’re not the most liquid contract we’ve got, even though open interest has grown to record. It’s, uh, it still can be a little bit tricky on the liquidity side.
Jeff Malec 04:34
You ever dabble in the pork bellies? Uh,
Jeff Apel 04:38
sure, I’ve traded pork bellies when they were available, yeah,
Jeff Malec 04:40
in the pit. Yeah, absolutely, but that came and went right. Like, when did pork boilies go away? Like,
Jeff Apel 04:47
yeah, I don’t remember the year, but they, they had a 10 plus years ago, you know, yeah, quite a quite a while ago. But they had a problem with liquidity, for one, and I think the information changed. They didn’t. They didn’t make bellies to fit that, that contract spec anymore. There’s something with the contract that kind of made it obsolete,
Jeff Malec 05:07
like a pork cut out versus the pork belly versus, yeah, yeah.
Jeff Apel 05:10
I think the Packers stopped making them that way, or fresh or frozen, or got it. I don’t remember what it was.
Jeff Malec 05:19
And give us what some of your favorite floor training stories? Got any good ones?
Jeff Apel 05:24
Well, I mean, I’ve got a few. I mean, the ones we can that are appropriate.
Jeff Malec 05:30
This is it can be R rated. Go ahead, whatever
Jeff Apel 05:32
you got. No. I mean, it was, it was just a great place to be. I mean, there was a lot of there was a lot of collaboration. There was a lot of bouncing ideas off each other. There was an informality that that we really liked is, you know, you could, once you got down there, you could talk anyway. You know, there was a certain vernacular that you could use and talk. You could talk loud. You could yell. You can be quiet. Obviously, language, you know, didn’t, didn’t matter what you said, as long as, you know, didn’t really hurt anybody, or wasn’t totally inappropriate, but you just had a lot of freedom down there. And that was really what what ended up being. I think the best part for me was that type of environment was it was allowed a lot of creativity. You know, you could sit there and stare at these numbers. All those walls had numbers on it. You could just stare at them and pick something out and say, I wonder why that’s doing that, or I’ve been watching that. Or you also could trade with your hearing more too, like now you have to see something’s moving on the screen where there you were. Kind of using all your senses, you could hear a loud yell go up from, let’s say, the belly pit, and be like, Oh, what was that? What happened? Or the hog pit, or even if it was the equities allowed, roar came out there. Well, then you better start looking something happened somewhere. And so you could kind of, instead of you might miss if you don’t have your pork screen set up right, or your alerts set up, right? You know, the it’s just a lot quieter, you know. So it’s, it’s and it’s, that was a long time ago, but it, that was what I liked the best about it.
Jeff Malec 07:03
Yeah, and you’re no offense, but you’re the right body type size for it too, right? Yeah, six four or something. I’ll talk. I’m 6666, sorry, short of you two inches. Yeah, big guy.
Jeff Apel 07:16
And it helps. You know, one of my first jobs actually, down there was a summer thing they needed. They needed someone to so it was unemployment number of the euro, dollars and Revco had a problem with some locals were bringing people in to box out the clerks in a certain way, because space was so premium, you know, it was, you know, and so you would stand in there. So they brought me in for this unemployment number to just stand back to back with this guy and push him the whole time like it was like, you know, they brought me in, and I got ridiculed for it too, and I had to stand there for, I think, about two hours and just push against this guy to keep our lane open. And how big was the other guy. I mean, he was a grown man at this time. I was probably like, 1718, something like that, you know. But I was a young kid on a summer job as a runner.
Jeff Malec 08:07
I got just the guy, Hey, yeah, they get in there.
Jeff Apel 08:11
Yeah, they brought me over there. I mean, I was pouring sweat, and they were pretty mean to me too, you know, like, why are you here? Because you they know you’re not there every day, yeah, and it was this big day, so that was, I think, one of my first that’s where the size really came came in handy a few times, and other times it did too. I mean,
Jeff Malec 08:33
and when you loud, right? You’re screaming. But the cattle pit wasn’t that big. How many guys in the cattle pit? Oh,
Jeff Apel 08:39
there were probably 50 to 70, maybe something like that, 5050, people, 70 people. So it could get really crowded when it was busy, but um, right,
Jeff Malec 08:50
versus plenty of 30 year bond was maybe two, 300 at its peak. And yeah, right, S and PS
Jeff Apel 08:56
1000, yeah, exactly No. So yeah, it could be. It was a factor. But it, it was a factor, for sure,
Jeff Malec 09:04
if you could explain what’s traded there, like, what there’s two types of cattle contracts, explain the differences, kind of how you looked at those contracts.
Jeff Apel 09:16
Well, there’s live cattle, which are, you know, animals that have been put in the feed yard and fed, fattened up to whatever weight they’ve decided to put them to and ready for slaughter. Basically. Then there’s the feeder cattle, which are, those are animals that are coming off grass and going to be put in the feed yard. So
Jeff Malec 09:38
they’re both alive. When we Yeah, they’re both, they’re both
Jeff Apel 09:41
live. Feeder cattle is an index. The contracts are an index that’s made up of all these different auctions throughout the country. And live cattle is still live, live delivery, if, if it comes to that,
Jeff Malec 09:55
and then when? So when I buy it, before it goes I’m at an auction house where. Is mostly Texas, Montana, where those auctions have for feeder
Jeff Apel 10:05
cattle. Yeah, they’re all over the country. I mean, Florida is a huge feeder cattle state. Obviously the the prairie country or pasture country is big. Montana. Type area, South Dakota, North Dakota, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, of course. I mean, anywhere there’s grass, there’s there’s feeder casts. A lot of states have have them. You know, it’s
Jeff Malec 10:30
and what’s the size like when I buy them from, uh, in that auction? How big are they versus when they leave to get slaughtered?
Jeff Apel 10:38
Well, the weights can, you know, the weight breakdowns anywhere from 1000 pounds to, like, 500 pounds. You know, you depending on the depending on how long you want to feed them and what weight you want to bring them to. I mean, different people are in different businesses of how long they feed them for, and a lot of it, some of it’s dependent on the time of the year to, you know, as you come move into the winter and you get frost, certain animals come off grass, or they decide to winter them, and then they come off in the, you know, in the spring. So it’s kind of like Mother Nature decides some of the,
Jeff Malec 11:13
yeah, we had an old blog post. We’ll put in the show notes of the picture from space that proves commodities or diversify or something like that. I can’t remember the exact title, but it was when there was this freak June, or maybe it was August, September, snowstorm in the Dakotas, I believe right in the cattle hadn’t gotten their winter coats yet. Yeah? So it killed a whole, like, 10s of 1000s of cattle. Caused some limit up moves for a couple of days.
Jeff Apel 11:42
Yeah? I mean, absolutely, you know, the death losses, it can be a thing, if it’s bad enough, at the wrong time of year. And the biggest thing is they lose weight.
Jeff Malec 11:52
They lose weight just being out there when they’re
Jeff Apel 11:55
well, yeah, because they have to, their body takes more calories to heat themselves up, you know? And they don’t, and they don’t, and they don’t get sometimes they can’t get to the food either. So they can’t, you know if they’re, if they’re whatever the hay or the feeding agent is clogged, they can’t get to it. They can’t walk in, in the snow drifts or what have you.
Jeff Malec 12:15
And that what are they mainly feeding them in the feedlot,
Jeff Apel 12:18
that’s a mix of of corn and soybeans, that kind of stuff. Milo,
Jeff Malec 12:25
but that’s the game too, right? If corn is more expensive, I’m shifting to more soybeans. If soybeans more expensive, I’m shifting to corn.
Jeff Apel 12:31
Yeah. I mean, there’s a I’m sure every operation has a different mix that they their proprietary mix, or whatever they have tested that works best for them, the type of cattle they like to feed the conditions that type of stuff. So I mean that that would vary on an operation by Operation basis,
Jeff Malec 12:48
but I wanted you to tell me some great line of like, they put on 20 pounds a week or something when they’re eating this stuff. Well,
Jeff Apel 12:53
it depends. Like the daily average gain is, like, we think we used to say it was about three pounds a day. And I don’t know if that’s still the same as it was. I know that they have been feeding cattle a lot longer days, and I’m sure they’ve improved the rations to try to get that to optimize it. You know? I’m sure there’s stuff in there that is optimizing the feed, like weight gainer or what have you. You
Jeff Malec 13:23
we got the basics now. So let’s back up. We wrote a blog post. You gave us a quote for it. Few press articles lately, right? Eggs were in the news from whatever your political links are. Forget that for a second. But egg prices had spiked, and now there’s a couple articles, beef prices are the new egg prices. We’re at. Well, you tell us the stats, but basically, we’re at some near all time highs.
Jeff Apel 13:49
Yeah, I mean, retail prices is at or near all time record high. And you know that, that’s, you know, demand has, has held up Excellent. You know, the consumer hasn’t really cracked when it comes to beef. Yet, production has been low over the last, you know, number of weeks your slaughter is, is down quite a bit on the year there. And so that’s led into this, this higher retail price. And the retailer’s got, you know, he’s got margin to worry about as well. So they’re keeping the price high right now.
Jeff Malec 14:27
So, so that’s, let’s pull on that third so they’re doing it on purpose, right? They control, well, not.
Jeff Apel 14:32
I mean, they just have their pricing models. So they’re they have whatever margin built into whether it’s a store margin or a meat case margin. I mean, they want to try to maintain that and
Jeff Malec 14:47
and what’s that chain look like? It goes from so feedlot, right? Goes from the rancher to the feedlot to someone like Purdue, or something like who’s buying it in mass, from there, the what do you like? The. Producers.
Jeff Apel 15:00
Well, like, like, like, a chain store, you know, let’s something like that, or Walmart, you know, they’re the ones buying it from, let’s say the Packers, which would be the Packers, Tyson, yeah.
Jeff Malec 15:13
JBS, so the Packers buying it from the feedlot, yeah, they’re
Jeff Apel 15:16
buying the live animals, and they’re the slaughter houses or the harvest you know, their process processing the animal into the cuts of beef that that’s either the consumer has told them to or that they the common ones. Whatever you want to say, ground beef stuff.
Jeff Malec 15:33
You ever been to a slaughterhouse? What’s that? Oh, I haven’t I have not, no thanks. I might swear off beef, right? It’s not worth it. So back to the storyline. So those retail prices that’s across all these cuts and everything, and that’s average.
Jeff Apel 15:51
That’s the average retail USA releases the average retail price where they smush them all together and make an average out of it. So that individual cuts could certainly be higher or lower than that. But, you know, like, I think the 50s just made all time record highs coming into the, you know, the from Memorial Day to July 4, as the retailer was featuring more ground beef. And, you know, because it’s, it’s a little, it’s cheaper, you know, the average cost is cheaper for ground beef. So they decided,
Jeff Malec 16:20
what’s the 50s? What does that mean? 50 is
Jeff Apel 16:23
like a is half fat and half beef. So they mix that with a 90 to make it 8020 which is what you get in the store, 80% meat and 20% fat, which is your basic like brown beef that you go and make a meat, low fat off or what have you,
Jeff Malec 16:42
um, love meat, though, meatballs. Oh yeah, yeah, sure, sure. The so, what’s that price? Did we say the price? It’s like, close to $10 a pound. Or what? Isn’t
Jeff Apel 16:52
it? I thought that, oh gosh, I don’t have that offhand. I thought it was eight something, wasn’t it? Okay? It was eight something on the average. I had a
Jeff Malec 17:03
CNN with 926,
Jeff Apel 17:06
a pen. Okay, yeah, I mean, it’s a moving target, so, yeah, I mean, it’s up there that’s really high for ground beef, right? You know, when you talk about feeding for large parties or family gatherings, that type of stuff. You know, your outlay, it can be a lot for for a family on a budget, that type of stuff. So, I mean, the
Jeff Malec 17:29
so tell us, right? The old line in commodities that cure for high prices is high prices. So, correct, right? Like, how does the So, who’s controlling that if they slaughter more, then the price go down. There’s greater supply, correct? But then they have less for the next cycle, right? So talk through that whole process.
Jeff Apel 17:50
Well, the right now, the slaughter is reduced because packers are also losing money. So they’re they’re paying their cost to buy the animal. Is very is all time record high last week also, and
Jeff Malec 18:03
which is the futures price we see, basically, that’s nice,
Jeff Apel 18:07
yeah, but the live cattle price was like 230 to 240 last week. And August futures are here at, you know, 227 so they’re curious, a significant discount to that record high price, which is, I tend to think that that’s futures markets do that when a price is record high, they don’t anticipate it staying forever. They start to look for the top. And they would move to, you know, futures under, under cash, right? Because of that statement, the cure for high prices is high prices. A lot of times the futures move to some sort of discount, whether it’s in a lot of in all markets, I think, kind
Jeff Malec 18:44
of, and that’s per pound. So it’s 230 per pound for the live animal, yes. And then it gets to 950 in the store, basically. So there’s
Jeff Apel 18:54
process, yeah, and efforts, process, and de bone, and, you know, there’s the drop value comes out of there, which is, you know, the that that’s the guts, basically, you know, and that that gets shipped overseas, more primarily,
Jeff Malec 19:11
what? Now we’re talking, what do they do with that? Well,
Jeff Apel 19:16
I mean, they, we don’t eat it here, so that goes over there, and they, they either eat it or process it into something
Jeff Malec 19:21
tripe. What is that kind of
Jeff Apel 19:24
something like that.
Jeff Malec 19:27
So why are the Packers losing money? Because the live animals. So how does this resolve itself? Who has to move first? Well,
Jeff Apel 19:36
I mean, you gotta, you gotta either have a price where people don’t want to eat, refuse to get consumer backlash switching to other products, which we’ve talked about, I think, on some posts,
Jeff Malec 19:48
which is why, like, a McDonald’s was be like, Hey, we’re losing money on these. Let’s switch a little bit more to chicken, something like that. Well, McDonald’s
Jeff Apel 19:54
has promoted, just added the they just added the Snack Wrap is back, and that’s a chicken product. It, you know. So that’s already kind of happening in the menus. It just, you know. So that’s one way it can have, is you have a demand, a shift in demand, let’s say, and people start eating something else or finding substitutes. And the other is you can get, you know, get more cattle, you know. And we, we think you’re pretty close to to running into more cattle seasonally here in August, September and October, supply is going to increase. Those two things would eventually take care of it.
Jeff Malec 20:34
And how long does that take? Like, what’s the total herd in the US look like?
Jeff Apel 20:38
Well, the number of cattle on fee is like 1% below the five year average. There was just a report on Friday, on Friday, and you know, we’re a couple percent below a year ago, on the on the on feed numbers 2% below a year ago.
Jeff Malec 20:56
So supply down, and how many is that? I’m looking back at our blog. So two points we had in our book, the cattle herds at its lowest level since 1951 Yeah, at 6 million head.
Jeff Apel 21:09
Yeah, but that’s that, that includes, like the calves and animals that are out on grass, still, cows. So that’s every, every type of animal where, you know, feed yard animals are just the steers and heifers that are in the that we’re going to eat. Basically, yeah, though, and then, and then they do slaughter cows as well for that’s primarily ground beef. And the cow slaughter is down, you know, quite a bit. And that’s where that, that 50 year low comes from, is that the we had years of drought that ended up liquidating the cow herd
Jeff Malec 21:46
because they were malnourished. They were so you had to, you didn’t
Jeff Apel 21:49
have grass, they didn’t have grass. So if there’s no grass, then instead of having them starve out there, you have to, you know, send them the market got it, but they’re not just dying on the field? No, no. I mean, there Pro, there was some death loss, probably. But no, generally, no, that’s not what it’s
Jeff Malec 22:06
from. So 86 million total, then what we have here, 11 million are in feed lots. Basically, yes, correct. And what’s the highest that numbers got? That goes high. I don’t
Jeff Apel 22:16
know what the all time high is, but it’s, it’s, it’s close to there. Well, it’s not, I’m not sure exactly where our relationship to that right
Jeff Malec 22:26
now. And talk about, how long does it take a new Is it two, three years, like a calf’s born to when it can go into the feedlot? How long does that take?
Jeff Apel 22:38
Well, born. And then it depends on what weight they want to put them in. If they want to put them in as calves, then they would like they’d be born in the spring, and then in the fall, they would go into the feed yard, if they’re going to take them in another year, make them what’s called a yearling. Then they would winter them, and then put them on feed in the spring.
Jeff Malec 23:00
So much. How did you learn all this stuff
Jeff Apel 23:03
over time? Yes, you know, I mean, talking to, you know, talking to people, listening a lot of listening, a lot of asking questions, a lot of wrong answers, you know. I mean, it’s just, it’s been, it’s been time listening to my dad, you know, all the time. So it’s, it’s just what I’ve it’s kind of something that, you know, instead of talking about sports, we talked about the cattle market. You know that that’s kind of where it came from. And sports No, not that much, no.
Jeff Malec 23:30
But the and you guys weren’t watching Yellowstone, right? Like, basically, the lesson is, this is a terrible business to be a wrench.
Jeff Apel 23:41
There used to be an old joke that, uh, you know, whether you died rich or poor in the cattle market, just depending on when you died, yeah,
Jeff Malec 23:50
one of these days. Um, all right, so how does it resolve itself? They’ll just, there’s more calves coming.
Jeff Apel 23:58
Yeah? You gotta, I mean, you gotta have what’s called expansion, and that this last report showed that that there were less heifers on feed than a year ago. So those are the females. And in order to, in order to get more have more animals, you need to start retaining the females and breeding, and, you know, and having put them out the pasture and having them have calves. And so that takes, that takes a couple of years to get the other hold it back. You got to get it, you know, inseminator, pregnant, and then have the animal all the way to the next cycle. So that can take a while,
Jeff Malec 24:34
like, a couple years, couple years could be a couple of years, yeah, but that’s the cycle we’re talking about. That’s the, yeah, that’s where we’re at. Prices, because those ranchers are, like, all right? Prices right now, to retain more females, get more calves, correct, right? I’m going to get my money back, plus some. So are these who’s making the money right now? The ranchers, uh,
Jeff Apel 24:56
cattle feeders are have a profit right now. You. Um, and that’s probably about it. I think the cow calf guys probably making some money too. And we don’t really track that as much as the packer margins because of the time frame we trade. We trade it closer up to the front. And so Packer margins tend to be, we think, a little bit more important than than that part. Cycle, when you’re talking about something that could take up to two years to happen, you know, that’s not something we for our style, that we really track a ton,
Jeff Malec 25:31
which we’re going to dive into Wharton in a sec. One more question on, should we put Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat to bed? Like, wasn’t that supposed to get the country and the world off beef?
Jeff Apel 25:46
Yeah. I mean, that was not
Jeff Malec 25:48
this. And, yeah,
Jeff Apel 25:50
there was that buzz. But I think that if you look at the stock price of those companies, that it’s kind of the market has voted that those that they didn’t really want that type of thing. So, you know, I mean, I don’t have an opinion on that, but it looks like they’ve, they’re having some some headwinds. Let’s say,
Jeff Malec 26:07
well, for sure, if you were, like, five years ago, you could have made an argument of, like, cattle business stay away, right? They’re coming out with all this fake meat, yeah? Like, it’s going to be a hard business. But it went as usually happens in the commodity markets, it went exactly the other way, probably because of that, right? They drove down some prices in the beginning. They didn’t retain enough females and grow the herd enough and boom.
Jeff Apel 26:33
Well, and I mean Demand beef demand, has been excellent, too, you know? And then, whether it’s these carnivore diets or, you know, it really came up the the pandemic, really, everybody sat at home and ate, and we started eating steaks, you know, they couldn’t go out, so they went and made steaks at home. And that ended up spurring this, this big demand push that we still haven’t really come to an end to yet. I think there’s signs that it, it could be slowing. There are indications that the consumers in you know some there’s their experience, some headwinds, whether it’s credit card debt or foreclosures or what have you. You know that, but it still hasn’t totally happened yet either,
Jeff Malec 27:16
and I’m always amazed. Go ahead, sorry, like here in Chicago, right? Like the we can put out a new Steak House, whereas an $88 stay, like nobody’s business. And I’m like, how can they keep rolling these out, and the next one’s just more expensive than the than the previous one,
Jeff Apel 27:37
yeah, and that, that part of the, that part of the restaurant business has has proven to be pretty, has been really resilient. And I you know, maybe it’s because of the income level the people that are going there are some somewhat more insulated from inflation. Or is it corporate, uh, type of expense accounts that do that, or travel, you know, which, which is all seemingly or, I mean, the stock market’s all time highs, and there’s unemployment. It’s not really an issue. So, you know, the case, you know, those two things need to, would need to change to have a real demand event, right? Yeah, I think for that would be more widespread or deeper. Let’s put it that way.
Jeff Malec 28:16
But it’s great to me, once they when they break the $100 marker. They all seem to try and stand their own $100 for now, I just pulled up for fun here the steak 48 Have you been there? I don’t know. I’ve heard of it. Though. He was the Masters guy, actually, and one he sold mastros for like 80 million. They had 456, restaurants Arizona, around here, waited out it’s non compete for like two and a half years. And then boom, launched steak, 48 which is essentially the exact same thing, but Right? A New York Strip, 16 ounce. New York Strip, 75 bucks, bone in rib eye. 22 ounces, 81 bucks. 45 day dry age, 99 bucks. Yeah, like, that’s insane.
Jeff Apel 29:00
That’s pretty expensive for a steak, right? Tell me.
Jeff Malec 29:11
All right. So Wharton, so you don’t just do this for fun. You guys trade this and make a living trading this in and out. So give us a little background on Bob. You said you joined him a few years after he started, but, yeah, tell us what you guys are doing at Wharton.
Jeff Apel 29:28
Well, so then we use all this, you know, all this knowledge that we’ve accumulated over the years and and things we’ve seen. And we decided we should try to leverage that and start up a CTA, which allowed us to, you know, get into a bigger pool investors than just just your friends, or just, you know, having accounts with buddies or what. And so we decided to do that, and we had always worked well together. Bob was a floor broker. I was a floor broker. We had partners on some business, and we got. Along. Well, we spoke the same language. We kind of, Bob’s from Nebraska, and grew up in the cattle business. His dad was a cattle buyer, and so we had this kind of, we just spoke the same language in a lot of different ways, and decided to become partners, and, you know, started opening accounts
Jeff Malec 30:20
and so and so, fully discretionary program. Yeah, we’re
Jeff Apel 30:25
a fundamental discretionary program. You know? We’re we, we get a concept or an idea and then try to see where that fits into the way the board is priced, where the futures are priced, and which month, which instrument, which strategy, the best way to take advantage of that? You know, sometimes there’s just different there’s different stories, and so different products end up fitting that whether it’s a spread or an option or futures, we tend to use a lot of options, long only options, puts or calls with the overnight event risk and macro event risk announcements. We think that’s a way that we try to, you know, manage risk for our customers. So it’s all we try to do a defined risk strategy on on the on options. So we use a lot of now. We do do futures too, and we do do spreads as well, but we like to use long puts and long calls mostly, and
Jeff Malec 31:26
this is all in cattle or other. We
Jeff Apel 31:30
also do the hogs as well. Okay, you know, the hogs is another part of our business that we we trade them a little bit, maybe more technically, with a with a fundamental bias, they kind of go hand in hand. There’s, there’s, there’s some overlap in the markets, so we watch those in
Jeff Malec 31:51
trades as well, right? An economist would say they’re elastic in price, and people would switch to pork, right? If beef is too expensive, I’ll eat more pork. I’ll buy a pork tenderloin for dinner for the family.
Jeff Apel 32:03
You would think, I mean, yeah, in theory, in theory, they should. You know, it hasn’t really happened that way yet, but I think we’re getting ready to test that with the price, where the price would be so high that you would think pork would catch some sort of bid somewhere. I mean, there’s issues with the quality of the maybe the pork chop that they’re providing now maybe isn’t the best all the time, but, you know, they’ve, they’ve, they’ve, when pork was the called the other white meat. It was, you know, they they made it less, less fatty, more health. They were trying to compete with chicken, yeah, on a fat Bay. That’s when, like, fat was a big problem. And so I think that some of that changed the breed of the animal, maybe, but you would think pork would get some sort of play here on the feature side of it, for retailers to offer something that is more affordable for the family as you move into the fall
Jeff Malec 33:01
and and so the option, right? Cattle especially is known for these big limit moves every now and then it can. So what talk through some of that, What’s the longest you’ve seen a B limit or couple days? And what
Jeff Apel 33:16
that had to be? That had to be mad cow in 2003 when they found that, they found the animal here, and then it was, it was down limit for, I think three days. It traded maybe the third day. But they expanded the limit in there too. So that was the first time they ever expanded them. But I think that it can now, the limits are so big that I don’t think it’s it’s really as much of an issue. Um,
Jeff Malec 33:40
what are the what are they? Not the Chinese,
Jeff Apel 33:44
$9 I think $9 is the is the August, the futures limits, okay, 975, maybe, yeah, it’s, it’s very big.
Jeff Malec 33:55
Um, yeah, very big. But to your point, those have happened over the over time. So you guys experience was, hey, it better to do options sometimes not have that spike risk.
Jeff Apel 34:05
Yeah. I mean, you know, the event risk can be serious. You know, there was a plant fire in, I don’t know what year that was, 2019 a plant, a slaughter facility, caught fire, and that was a sharp down move. You know, they might not have been able to get out of in the future as effectively, depending on your position, size or what or how quickly you move. You know, there are events from time to time, and we’ve seen them, so we just, that’s how we choose to do it. And, you know, we’re like, you know, medium term time length. So, you know, we think that if we really get onto something, that the options offer a way to take advantage of that, and
Jeff Malec 34:51
there’s no way to trade really. Or do you think there’s a way to trade those events? Right? You’re just have your positioning, and the events are going to happen like in any other. Market, and you just got to kind of sidestep those landmines.
Jeff Apel 35:04
Well, I mean, that’s where, where, like money management, comes into place. Or, you know, that’s why, well, with position sizing or or through that use of the use of the options, at least, you know your risk. I mean, they can announce anything tonight, and whatever we paid for those options is all we can lose, right? You know, so that it’s, it’s defined risk, you know, it’s almost like, if you have an error, you want to establish a loss right away. And then, you know, you don’t trade an error right throughout the day or something like that. You just get out of it,
Jeff Malec 35:38
right? And what’s your So, what does that look like? How much you willing to risk per trend you have like sec? Do you have limits in live versus feeder? Do you have limits in Port?
Jeff Apel 35:48
No, because we don’t have a hard, fast thing on that. That’s why we that’s why we use the options. Is because it can take time to develop some of these stories. You know, the cattle is a unique contract because of the it is still a live animal, and so it can’t be stored like gold. Like gold you could put in behind your desk and leave it there forever, right? And oil, same way, corn has a long storage life, but the live animal doesn’t, you know? I mean, it has to come to market at some point. And so it can take, it can take time for these things to develop, depending on how fast they do or don’t come to the market. And we’re seeing some of that right now as as days on feed has increased tremendously. And that’s why we’re seeing weights like 2025 pounds over a year ago, because with with back to the size of the herd being so low, the availability of feeder cattle is is less than it had been. So in order to go out and get those animals that they have to compete on price. And instead of buying those out, laying all that cash for those animals with a high break even, they’ve chosen to keep the ones in the feed yard and feed them longer and make and make them fatter. And the Packers have also been on board with that because they want to make up the tonnage that they’re losing from the cow slaughter. And so it’s been kind of a unique, unique situation, as the kale just been pushed back and back and back. And you can see that in the weight data, if you look at any weight data.
Jeff Malec 37:26
And as part of that, also, right? Corn spin basically going straight down. Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Apel 37:31
I mean, it, it the price of corn. If a corn was at eight or 10, you know, at all time highs, we would be having a different conversation, but so it’s in here, and it allows, it allows that strategy to happen also,
Jeff Malec 37:46
but that’s also a weird part of this whole thing, right? Like you should, if the inputs, the feed, is the main input, right? What else is there? Yeah, well, in the animal, but, yeah, yeah, but that’s one of the main inputs. Once it’s there, if that’s declining in price. Why is the output increasing price? That’s one of the weird pieces to the story.
Jeff Apel 38:07
Oh, they feed because, if corn sheep, they feed it more so, like they put more pounds on, you know, the like, the old theory used to be, you know, you would walk it off the farm instead of drive it off the farm, right? If prices were low, you feed it to your animals to try to get try to get, you know, some of that back, yeah, but I mean it, it. It adds weight. When corn sheep, they feed more of it.
Jeff Malec 38:39
Talk through some of your old stories as you call them, right? Like, so that’s your trade setups and whatnot. You call them stories.
Jeff Apel 38:46
Well, yeah. I mean, those are scenarios. Let’s put it there, yeah, yeah. I mean, the, you know, the cattle markets kind of like a, it’s a revolving scenario, right? So it evolves on itself, like this drought, you know, the drought of two to three years ago has now the repercussions of that we’re living through, and it’s been ongoing. Well, there was lots of stops and starts along the way. There was, you know, the whatever happened with the pandemic with as the market crashed into the 80s. There was, there’s various things that come along to disrupt that story or delay it or but it always is kind of building on itself. And so right now, we’re making these highs because of what happened with mother nature and the in the drought, and we’re probably doing something to demand or changing some consumer sentiment somewhere that in the future, we think there will be a hangover from it. It’s just what it’s it’s kind of when, when it ends up showing up, or what are the circumstances of bringing about?
Jeff Malec 39:47
So, yeah, so what’s your stance right now, as as you’re looking at the market at all time highs, what’s the word playbook not to give away the farm, so to speak. Pun intended. But
Jeff Apel 39:58
yeah, we think the prices are getting. Are going to be topping out probably for the year. Pretty soon, we think you’re headed into more cattle, particularly in the Midwest. You know, Iowa, on that last report, has 6% more on feed, and those cattle should start to be ready in the fall that that’s when those that region, their cattle come to market. So we’re looking for that to kind of pressure the market. You know, also the, you know, with the border being closed, the southern border being closed due to the screw worm risk, you know, that has, that has certainly, I think, made supply tighter, or made people more bullish, because those animals just aren’t able to come over. And Texas placed a lot. That was how they were getting, getting a lot of animals. So Texas on feed numbers are way down due to that. And when, whenever that opens, is anybody’s guess. Wait, so what is that? Screw worm. Yeah, that’s a parasite that lives on a fly that can infect the infect the
Jeff Malec 41:04
animal. And so the Mexican herds have screw worm.
Jeff Apel 41:09
They’re in Mexico. Yeah, they’re a couple 100 miles from the border. They picked them up. So as a precautionary measure, then the US closed the border to feeder cattle imports from Mexico. That was back in, I think, November,
Jeff Malec 41:23
yeah. And what are those tariffed and all that is those Canada, even if they were coming over,
Jeff Apel 41:30
no, there’s no tariffs on the on the animals, but they’re just not coming over anyways, yeah. I mean, there it’s, it’s frozen, it’s closed.
Jeff Malec 41:39
And do we get some from Canada as well? Or it’s too cold?
Jeff Apel 41:43
No, they get, they import Peter cattle from Canada. But there’s no, there’s no restrictions on that right now. So that’s flowing fine.
Jeff Malec 41:54
And so if you have this outlook, how far out Will you play it? Or, like you said, if there was the drought, when was the drought in 22
Jeff Apel 42:03
Yeah, yeah. 2021 to 23
Jeff Malec 42:07
Yeah. So were you putting on positions three, four years out, thinking this would happen? That’s too far.
Jeff Apel 42:13
That’s too far. We just kind of trade the next 30 to 60 days or two weeks to two months, kind of like to say that’s kind of a thing should set up. I mean, we’re looking for something closer than that based on, based on whatever a seasonal shift in demand, or a seasonal shift in supply,
Jeff Malec 42:40
or inter season, like, but if it’s every two weeks, like something that’s happening in between,
Jeff Apel 42:45
yeah? I mean, if it started or, you know, just each, each scenario is is different. But, I mean, we’re short to medium term, you know, we’re not going to go super far into the back and do something for next year. That’s not really our style. That’s not what we
Jeff Malec 43:01
grew up. That’s not our style. Yeah. And then I’m assuming which I do have the numbers somewhere, but not in front of me, but that makes you uncorrelated to other CTAs, to trend following, to what you might call it, because you have one, you’re not trading all the different markets, but two, you’re on a different time frame.
Jeff Apel 43:17
It could be, I mean, that that could be one factor. I mean, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t fully know why we’re uncorrelated like that, but, I mean, we are, but it could be
Jeff Malec 43:29
you are because you don’t think about it. You’re not trying to do things like they do,
Jeff Apel 43:33
right? Yeah, I mean, we’re just focused on our story and our system, and, hey, we have our we’ve been doing it together for so long, talking. I mean, I’ve that, you know? I think that that’s what kind of makes it unique, is that, you know, the length of time we’ve been, kind of, the whole group has been together, you know. And so we have our own little way we look at the things and triggers and signals and, you know, you’re kind of trying to remember different scenarios that happened before and and see if they happen again. And I think that that’s one thing where I think we were pretty good at, and it, it’s how we add some some value is if something new does come up. I think that through our experience and through our long term contacts, we can fit new pieces into the puzzle, you know, and figure out what it means to the futures market. You know, as fast as you know, as anyone we think you know, or yeah, pretty fast, you know. I don’t want to be, I don’t. I’m not saying we’re the smartest guys out there, which we’re not. It’s just we, I think we can plug some new stuff in. Well, we’re
Jeff Malec 44:47
pretty, how does that look? You’re so you’re calling around all the time, talking to feed lots, talking to packers, talking to these groups, and kind of getting Intel.
Jeff Apel 44:56
Or, yeah, we, yeah. We have, we have, you know, commercial contacts that we just. Talk to, and then also knowing how to read the reports, which reports to read. You know, I certainly monitor all the news wires I possibly can through, whether it’s x or any other type of sites that I can find, you know, I mean, I’m, you know, you’re constantly combing the news for anything that that could affect. Yeah, affected. I mean, anymore you have to watch everything, because something could happen overseas that could completely invalidate your entire theory. Yeah, you know. I mean, there could be something going on with, with with tariffs, or with a pair Mad Cow, so I need something you have either just who knows, you know, it’s so interconnected.
Jeff Malec 45:51
What are your thoughts on? Right? There’s these groups doing what they call quantum mental right? So they’re kind of systematizing all these fundamental inputs. Or they’re having AI read X and read these things and kind of trying to do what you’re doing, but in a systematic quant way, like, Do you think that’s, I mean, viable, or, what are your thoughts on
Jeff Apel 46:09
it? Well, I mean, it’s, I’m sure it’s a factor. I mean, I don’t know to what degree, and I’m sure it’s going on and it’s just another markets are always changing. You know, whether it was, you know, the limit used to be 100 points, and there was only 50,000 open interest. And then this change, and the contract specs change. And, I mean, it’s, it’s always been, I think it’s always been changing. So it’s just, it’s a new change, and it can, maybe it could make things more volatile or or or or more extreme on prices, if, if you know, they can push it a certain way, or someone can get trapped, or whatever. But, I mean, it’s always been a moving target. Yeah, it’s never been easy. I mean, I don’t, I don’t, I never have thought that that trading cattle futures was easy for, you know, it’s just has always been difficult and a lot of work and a lot of discipline.
Jeff Malec 47:05
Yeah, I joke with I think we had a guy on one, so I was like, Why doesn’t Citadel or someone do this, right? Yeah? And the the wrong answer to me, it’s like, oh, they don’t have the contacts I do. Like, well, they could probably buy those. But the right answer is, me, it’s too small, it’s not worth their time.
Jeff Apel 47:23
Well, I mean, yeah, it’s just, I mean, all, a lot of the news is available. It’s not, it’s not as on, you know, it’s a lot more transparent than it used to be, I think. And, and, sure, I mean, it’s, it’s not, you know, you’re competing when there’s, you know, money involved. People are competing for it. And so you’re, you’re part of that. I mean, that. I mean, we just try to stick to our system and it works for us and not really worry about what other people doing. And I think that that that’s something that you learned in the on the floor, in the pit, is because there were so many different traders down there, and this guy was a back month spreader, and that guy was a front month only. And necessarily i If, and hey, I’m a fundamentalist, and you didn’t really, everybody kind of stayed in their lane what they were good at. You know, some people were market makers, and they were great at that, but if they tried to get into a fundamental trade, well, then they might have some difficulty. And so we you would just try to focus on, you know, what market suited you and what style suited you and your personality, and stick with that. And it’s adherence to that that I think, over time, you know, allows us to be competitive in the space.
Jeff Malec 48:30
And I think you could drive yourself crazy, right? Like chasing on the floor back then, like, Oh, that guy’s buying. Yeah, he’s buying. Like, he might have some weird reason offsetting some book got an order from the floor, like, Yeah, you can’t know, right?
Jeff Apel 48:45
You have to focus on your trades and your system and what works for you, and if it doesn’t work for you, and then you change your system, but don’t try to you necessarily compete. So I mean that, I’m sure that stuff’s going on and, you know, hopefully they make a lot of money on it. You know,
Jeff Malec 49:03
how’s it look? But between you and Bob, like, if he thinks you’re going higher, you think you’re going lower, what’s that look like? You have a well, I mean,
Jeff Apel 49:13
well, you gotta, if you come up with this, that’s an interesting question. If you the way we do it is, you know, you come up with an idea, and you kind of gotta sell it to each other. And so, hey, you know, look at this. It’s, you know, and over, you know, you know, here we think it’s going markets going higher. Well, you know, the the box beef cutouts going higher. And sounds like cattle are a little tight in certain areas right now. And all the stochastics is oversold. And, oh, look, it’s, it’s, you know, in this perfect area. So you’ve got to sell the trade to each other, you know. And, you know, or if let’s say, let’s say, it’s not going well, then somebody could be like, Well, I’ve just had enough of this trade. And then, you know, being partners, you say, well, if somebody says that, you kind of. Say, Let’s get out of it, and we can always buy it or sell it back tomorrow. And so we’re we’re never really afraid to miss any trade if it’s not working. We tend to try to get out of it and find something that is working. And we don’t like sitting with big losers for long periods of time and having to train mental, you know, mental capital, and it’s you can, I mean, we used to say that, hey there, there’s nothing like getting nothing to get you bullish, like getting along, you know. And so just sometimes get out, and maybe the next day you come in and say, Boy, I should buy this thing, or I should sell this thing. And so, you know, do to try to, like, keep your mind clear whatever the positions, if you’re not sleeping because of your position, you’ve got the wrong position or
Jeff Malec 50:49
position, which is an interesting point. Like, as discretionary traders, how do you you have any training with that? Or how’d you just learn to live with that? Or that is a good theory. Like, if I can’t sleep with it on, it’s, it’s the wrong, you
Jeff Apel 51:03
got too many on, yeah, you know. And so, yeah, go ahead, sir. It’s just somehow I picked up, just picked up over the, you know, that’s probably listen to old timers talk, you know, something like that. If they take you out dinner, I just, you know, the mental side of trading is, is, you know, almost as is, or as important as anything. So,
Jeff Malec 51:26
yeah, but it’s right, the systematic guys, trend followers, like, Hey, we’ve been here before. Here’s the average of all our past drawdowns and this and that and right? They it’s probably false sense of security, right? Because they could have a big, huge one in the future, but they have this sense of security of the models doing just fine. Don’t worry about
Jeff Apel 51:45
- Yeah, they trust the process. And to some degree, we just do the same. Our fundamental system ends up, over time, we ended up figuring out and and these things, you know, stuff ends up happening that that makes it, makes it work. And, you know, because the fundamentals do our drivers. And if somebody is technical and systematic, that’s, once again, that’s the system they’ve chosen. And it certainly works, you know? I mean, there’s used to be an old saying that all systems work. People don’t, you know. And so it’s if you just got to kind of get out of your own way sometimes and and we’re a fundamental based program, so it’s, it’s not always just below this area. We get out or above this area, we get out.
Jeff Malec 52:32
My change to that line. I used to say, systems don’t break. They just get more risky.
Jeff Apel 52:37
There you go. Sure it’s a similar, similar, yeah,
Jeff Malec 52:42
like, this model is broken. Like, well, no, or it’s just way more risky than you thought.
Jeff Malec 52:53
So prices are going to fix themselves. We don’t need to worry about $300 stakes over there at stake 48
Jeff Apel 53:01
I don’t that that’s an expensive steak. Yeah, that’s an expensive steak, it,
Jeff Malec 53:08
but it’s crazy, right? There’ll be a new steak restaurant in Chicago next year that’ll be empty, so we have right that $100 mark, you
Jeff Apel 53:17
know, we have to get into right now is seasonally. Is a slow time of year. I mean, you know how hot it is here in Chicago right now? Nobody is grilling right now, right? So the weekend it was, everybody’s inside, not, you know, just ordering takeout, right? And so and everybody’s traveling. Kids are on a weird schedule. So that’s why they call it the dog days of summer. Kind of, it’s, it’s the lack of a fixed schedule. And then as you move into football season or back to school, well, then everybody starts having this more schedule, and that’s considered a better demand time. And so even if the you know, you can sell less meat in in July and August than you can in May and June, no matter what the price is. And so it’s if it was cheap, you can move less of it now, because it’s just nobody’s eating and in that way. And so you have to get into a better demand period and see if, if the consumer has really switched once families start having more dinners after school, or, you know that that type of stuff, whatever the better scheduling is, more rigid scheduling.
Jeff Malec 54:22
Here’s what I want to see. The kit. The kids are obsessed with canes, fried chicken. Like everyone, every kid I know, is just going there non stop. I’m like, Yeah, forget beef. They want this. I don’t think it’s all that great. I think Chick fil A is better. But it seems to me, chicken is like taking over,
Jeff Apel 54:40
right? Yeah. I mean, I think there is, that’s maybe a generational thing that they’re, they’re into a little bit more chicken fingers and ranch and, yeah, there’s a Chick fil A here, it’s packed. There’s a canes here, it’s packed. You know, that’s why McDonald’s is adding the Snack Wrap. You know, I mean, you got Popeye’s chicken sandwiches, excellent. Every. Everywhere is basically adding chicken. I mean, I I wholeheartedly agree with that, that anecdotally, it looks like the the fast food chains are trying to add chicken, not they’re not adding burger right now. And, you know, that’s probably due there. There’s, you know, that it’s one, that, for some reason, they like it better. And then two, it’s probably at some level of price issue, a margin issue,
Jeff Malec 55:27
but not cheap. It’s like 18 bucks. It’s crazy. Yeah, I think that guy’s a billionaire already. But,
Jeff Apel 55:34
yeah, another chains, you know that that’s is expensive, and Chipotle is kind of the same way. I mean that Chipotle is very popular, you know, and so that’s an expensive meal.
Jeff Malec 55:45
But in theory, those the right those guys will become more beefy, right? Beef, the more money you have, the more beef you buy is kind of the well, yeah, better the economy’s doing all this, yeah. And you see that in third world or developing countries, the more their GDP goes up, the more beef they eat,
Jeff Apel 56:04
correct? Yeah, we believe that too. If you, if you get fired from your job, you’re not going to go out and have a steak dinner. It’s a celebratory type of meal, right? Let’s say, if you’re get get a new job, and you start doing better, you’re going to go out and celebrate. Hey, let’s get a steak, you know. So it certainly, it certainly fills that void for being a treat. You know what I mean? Yeah, you know a date night dinner or something like that, special occasions.
Jeff Malec 56:33
Well, we’ll see if these kids grow up and don’t just take their dates to canes. Okay, hey, let’s go get some canes.
Jeff Apel 56:40
Remember, you got the ice there. They got the good ice there. That’s what they like,
Jeff Malec 56:43
too. My son likes the bread the best. I’m like, I don’t know about this chicken. He’s like, Oh, the chicken’s not that good, but the you get this garlic bread, yeah? That is, that’s awesome. I’m like, okay, and the sauce, and it’s just dipping the bread in the sauce, yeah? All right, Jeff, anything else we should know? We’ll put your, I don’t think, contact info in the show notes, put the link to that blog post in there, and thanks for coming on.
Jeff Apel 57:12
Well, Jeff, when I when I saw you last week of the game, and you’re like, Well, hey, we’re gonna you want to do this podcast. Of course, I was like, Yeah, thinking it was maybe some day, way in the future, not Yeah, like three days later, and so I was pretty relaxed about it. Then today is. As we got closer, I was like, Man, I don’t know if I know, you know, have all these stats down, quite good enough. And it went, we went well. So thanks for helping me through it. I really appreciate that. And you made me real comfortable with it. So
Jeff Malec 57:40
thanks. Thank you for coming on. We’ll see you soon. All right, thanks.
RCM Alternatives 57:47
You’ve been listening to the derivative links from this episode will be in the episode description of this channel. Follow us on Twitter at RCM ALT and visit our website to read our blog or subscribe to our newsletter at RCM alts.com If you liked our show, introduce a friend and show them how to subscribe and be sure to leave comments. We’d love to hear from you. This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, business investment or tax advice. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of RCM alternatives, their affiliates or companies featured due to industry regulations. Participants on this podcast are instructed not to make specific trade recommendations, nor reference past or potential profits, and listeners are reminded that managed futures, commodity trading and other alternative investments are complex and carry a risk of substantial losses. As such, they are not suitable for all investors.
This transcript was compiled automatically via Otter.AI and as such may include typos and errors the artificial intelligence did not pick up correctly.
