Grain Markets 101 with Ashley Bettenhausen

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Hi, everybody. I'm Paul Yeager, this is the MtoM Show podcast, a production of Iowa PBS in the Market to Market TV show. We're going to school, don't -don'tskip yet. Don't Don't, not yet. Here's what we're going to talk about. We're going to do a lot of defining of terms understanding of terms, things that get thrown around in the market analysis or the microplus segments that sometimes don't always have the same definition for everyone. A lot of people might just go Oh, yeah, that sounds familiar. Sounds good. Like a call or a put, we're going to talk a little bit about options hedging to arrive, locking the bin, slamming the door shut, carry basis, all sorts of things. We call this a one on one segment. Ashley Bettenhausen is a grain market advisor at Valiant Marketing. She's in North Dakota, and she was on X the other day. And she was talking about how she educates clients about understanding certain things. So we thought what a great opportunity to educate us about some of the same things and there's no harm in asking a question. So that's what I'm going to do for the next few minutes. Ask a lot of questions and Ashley is going to provide a lot of answers. If you want more coverage on a certain topic, put it in the comments or send me an email. Paul.Yeager@IowaPBS.ORG. And we'll get that in commodity markets one to one or two. Or maybe we'll call it 102. I don't know. We'll figure out a name. But this is the new episode that came out on a Tuesday. And guess what new episode will come out next Tuesday as well. Let's get to Ashley. December's in North Dakota. They're warm, right? 

[Bettenhausen] They're pretty, pretty toasty.

[Yeager] But how about is it snowy right now? 

[Bettenhausen] We actually don't have any snow on the ground. We did get a little frosty this morning. But other than that, we really haven't had any snow which we're really thankful for. We the only time that we had snow was Halloween, actually.

[Yeager] Now, this is the most controversial question. I'll ask, are you gonna follow the Bison game this weekend? Or is that a swear word?

[Bettenhausen] That's a tough one. Um, you know, once a Bison, always a Bison and that's where I went to college. And so I have to follow them. That's where my heart is. But I do. A lot of my clients are actually big Jackrabbit fans. So I also have to watch them sadly. 

[Yeager] I really couldn't believe I'm actually going to say this to the coach of USD and recruited the coach of NDSU to play college football at my alma mater, of Wartburg College. It's the only time I have legit credentials in these two football coaches. It's like a small world like this. Yeah, man's played for Bob Nielson, which is kind of fun. So you went to NDSU? Where did you grow up? And why did you pick to go to Fargo?

[Bettenhausen] Yeah, so I actually grew up in central Minnesota, just outside of St. Cloud, a little town of Princeton. And I went to NDSU for nursing. That's originally what I went for, and didn't get into the program the first semester, and kind of switched over to economics because I really loved economics in high school. And then we through NDSU, you have to take different subsets of economics. And I took Ag Econ, and the second week of ag econ. We looked at grain markets and commodities and I was hooked. And so I switched directly over to Ag Econ, then and I just love it. So that's what I graduated from NDSU. I have a bachelor's in agricultural economics and a minor in psychology.

[Yeager] But a farm background I mean, why did Ag Econ even click with you?

[Bettenhausen] I don't have a farm background at all. I think I wouldn't be considered probably two generations separated. My dad was a farm kid. But other than that, I have a great uncle that does, you know, a very small farm in Minnesota as well. Uh, but like I said, I mean, we had to switch, we had to kind of take a different subset. And so I saw commodity markets and I thought they were really interesting. I thought they were more interesting than stock markets. And so my plan for getting into it was I was, I wanted to work in Chicago, and be a broker and be on the floor and you know, be crazy like that. But I met a farmer and I moved out to the middle of nowhere North Dakota.

[Yeager] You met a farmer as a client or as a....

[Bettenhausen] As a prospect? As a prospecting single person in college. I met a farmer online. We got married. We are separated now, but got married. We have a kid. He's wonderful. And yeah...

[Yeager] That's okay. All right. Sorry about that. But, helped me out, at NDSU is it similar to the way it is in Manhattan or Ames or Stillwater where certain people will look at the plat book and decide romantic prospects, economic ones?

[Bettenhausen] I don't I don't think so. I think this part of North Dakota, you really just hoping that nobody's related to you. He was pretty safe picking someone from Minnesota? Because I didn't have the same last name. 

[Yeager] So then what would you classify that you do now, if you had this interest in Chicago and being a broker? Specifically what you are?

[Bettenhausen] So what I do, my first big girl job was I was the commodity and logistics coordinator for an ethanol plant. We've kind of built out a direct ship company, if you will. And we did, you know, different hauls throughout the state of North Dakota and Minnesota. And so I did that first. And then I was a green merchandiser for a co-op here in North Dakota. I just had a tough time with my boss there. And so I moved actually down to a co-op down in South Dakota. And from there, you know, I just felt, I always felt like I was always worked for the farmer, even when I was working for the elevator. And so July 7, of 2021. I started my company Valiant Marketing. And so what we do is we do cash brand marketing. So we talk to farmers through North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Ohio, about just how to do capture and marketing. So anything from understanding futures and basis to getting guys to not use DP and then some of them use some accumulator contracts and, and such like that, too. But I don't do brokership. I do have my series three, just because I can. But I mainly focus on the cash grainside.

[Yeager] Okay, so you gave me a lot to unpack right there. Sorry, cash grain versus futures? Yeah. What's the difference? 

[Bettenhausen] The difference is, I mean, the physical commodity. Right. So we're talking about hedgers and speculators. That's the difference. A hedger is somebody that has skin in the game. And so that would be considered a farmer, or an end user or, you know, a cattle producer. And a speculator somebody that's just in there for the money. And so I work with guys to understand how the futures and basis work into their cash price, and not just a number on the board.

[Yeager] I'm going to ask you a lot of questions today where I need to be no duh, Paul. And I'm just trying to, I have an audience that listens to this that always are like, Help me understand. And I know there are people who are sometimes too shy to ask, so forgive me, if I stop you at any point and say, explain it. Now I have a list of things that I'll get to that I want to ask you about. But we're not when you meet with somebody for the first time. Farmer calls you up, says Ashley, help me?

[Bettenhausen] Yep.

[Yeager] What's your opening pitch?

[Bettenhausen] Well, that's the beauty of it is I really don't have opening pitches anymore. Most of my business's referrals now, but if somebody you know, somebody brand new calls, asks me for help I you know, I ask them, you know, what commodity Are you looking for help with? You know, and so we start there. What do you typically do for marketing? Do you do forward marketing? Do you do basis contracts, you will do an HTA. Do you know what he stands for? Um, do put stuff on dp and forget about it until you have bills, you know, what are you? What do you already do? Okay, and then how can we progress you to be a little bit more savvy, a little bit more understanding of what the cash stuff is.

[Yeager] Before you define those things, why should I look at those options? I'm sorry, those opportunities. I have to not use the word option here. I have to realize that it means something different. But what do people look at you sometimes and boldface lie to you? Or just pretend that they know what's going on?

[Bettenhausen] I know some of them? Some of them do. Some of them just kind of nod their heads. And you can, I think this is where my, my psych minor actually comes into play is because I can typically figure out if somebody's you know, just just nodding along and, and usually, you know, not to be sexist or anything, but usually men open up a lot more to women when they don't understand something versus men. Anyways, awesome. So I, you know, I, there are more people that are willing to open up to me, and they say, Yeah, I just saw, you know, what do you mean by this word, and so we'll go through it. And so, if there's a farmer that asks me, you know, what, what are these things? I mean, I figure out where their baseline is. And if it's just what we sell it off the combine, and we get a check that I know where I need to start, and then we continue to progress it from there.

[Yeager] Okay, so I have corn that I combine from this 40, I put it into a bin, I slammed the door shut. Okay, what am I doing right there?

[Bettenhausen] Oh, well, you are, I think that's called store and ignore. It's been very common practice in the past couple years. So what happens is, I hope that you look at what your storage costs are, right? So if we did this in ‘21 and ‘22, your storage costs probably wouldn't be as much because, you know, you're getting PPP loans, you're getting different subsidies. And then you're also getting really low interest rates. And so that cost of carry wasn't as high. We were also an inverted market, which, if you have that question, I can answer that too. But we're in an inverted market. And so what that meant is later on, those prices were less and they wanted you to sell them now. And so if we're shutting the band, and we're not doing anything with it, you it's not your you're, you're probably not getting the best price, regardless if you feel like the market continues to go up, because you're not understanding what that's doing to your basis levels. And you're not helping yourself through the forward contractings.

[Yeager] Okay, yeah. So but okay, I've, you said, I slammed the door, and I let it sit, my cost to carry my, cost to store. It's in my bin on my property. What's it costing me?

[Bettenhausen] It's all of the money that you could be a, you know, earning from that, you know, so right now, it might be, you know, let's say that you don't have a loan out which loans right now are between eight and 9%, right, so we have to take eight or 9% against that grain. But let's say you don't have a loan, okay? You could be gaining five and a half percent on that money. So you have to take that in consideration, because it's a cost, right. And so we got to look at that electricity.

[Yeager] Because I'm running fans and I'm running, I have to stir in that type of thing. That's what you mean?

[Bettenhausen] Bin management really, of any type of situation. So if you, if you put it in wet, you, you know, you want to be able to move that around. So you have to auger it out, put it into a different bin, take the tops off all that type of stuff. So bin management's one. And then yeah, quality kind of goes with Bin management too. If you store it for too long as you don't take care of it, your risk of lower quality raises, and so arises and so understanding, you know, like if you put wet corn in, and depending on how wet it could get, I mean, you we had instances in 2019 that we had blue mold problems. Blue mold is something that nobody wants, you can't feed it to cattle and you can't really put it into ethanol because it doesn't blend very well.

[Yeager] Good luck with that. Yeah. So that's my cost to carry that you refer to when you say the market has carry Yeah, what does that mean?

[Bettenhausen] I think the biggest thing that farmers, if you're just starting to get into understanding markets, is looking at what the spreads are, so are the spreads spreads?

[Yeager] Spreads, I'm gonna ask you about that.

[Bettenhausen] Yep, so the spreads are so the calendar spread is what I would consider farmers to look at. So that is one month to the next month. And so if we look right now, we just rolled off the December corn but if we look from the March corn to the May corn, okay, those future months, what's the difference between those two months? Okay. So if you see that right now is less than less Later, when that's called a carry or contango, if you were fancy. It is now worth more than it is later, then that's an inverted market, inverted market or backwardation. And so, understanding what that means towards your price is probably the first thing that I would look at. And so if you have a carry within the market, right, I mean, when we rolled from the December to the March, I believe the high I saw was 26 cents. So there is 26 cent carry in the market. Okay, from the December to the March, that means that it was 26 cents better to be off the March. What does that mean towards your basis? Well, some places may have already rolled to their march, but they're not posted it yet. And so understanding Okay, well, what are they going to give me in the basis, you know, if, let's say today, or let's say when they rolled, you know, they were 50, under the December, and the next day, they were 70. Under the December, some farmers just looking at the numbers might be like, they just took 10 cents for me, they actually gave you 16, because they rolled to the next month, and it was 26 cents better. And so understanding how the basis works into your how the basis and spreads kind of coincide to each other, helps you better market your grain.

[Yeager] One of the easiest things for me to say sometimes when you say the word basis is it's like politics, all basis is local. Basis is what?

[Bettenhausen] Basis is your local supply and demand, there's a lot of things that go into basis spreads being one of them. But also I mean, I live in North Dakota, I am, I think 150 miles away from the center of the continent, it so it's really hard for me to get to any of the ports. And so the rail system is going to be more expensive right now. You have to figure out that you also have to figure out margin. This is something that elevators typically kind of hold to the side, and some traders don't understand. But I mean, when I worked for the elevator, when I worked for my first elevator, we didn't buy anything with less than, like a 20 cent margin on corn. And for some farmers, they would just be baffled by that. But I mean, I have a system that costs about a million dollars that has to get written, you know, has to fix up, we've got this other, you know, entities, my salary, some other people's salary has to come out of that. And so it's about so margin is one of them. Transportation is probably the biggest one. And then yeah, I mean, it's local supply and demand . If it's corn harvest, I don't want spring coming in. Right. And so I'm gonna penalize you if you're gonna bring in spring. And so that's kind of how the elevators thinking is there, they're thinking, How do I have space for this stuff? And how do I reflect that in my bid as well?

[Yeager] I wasn't going to do this. But since you have a background at a co-op, is the Co-Op my friend?

[Bettenhausen] The co-op can be your friend, absolutely. That's that, like, the co-op can be your friend, they have to exist for the farmer to exist. Because if you don't have, if you don't have an elevator near you, then you have to continue to go further out. Right. And so you want them to succeed. But you also want to keep them in check, you want to have a good business partnership. And there are some farmers and rightfully so, feel like they have been taken from the elevator or have taken from the co-op. And that's not, I mean, that's not always the case. Understanding I think, the more that the co-op can be transparent, and be transparent, and probably the most, the more that they can be transparent. Hey, this is what's going on. This is why this is you know, I think you can gain the farmers trust a little bit more. But there has been times there's been bad actors and a lot of things, right? We can, I mean, you can typically tell somebody that they're not good at a job, and they will go find a different job and agriculture is a little bit different. And so we have to have that partnership. We have to have that business partnership, but both sides have to feel like they have a say in the matter.

[Yeager] Bad actors in this okay. Yeah, we won't mention them by name. But a co-op, all competition makes us stronger is the notion. So when the ethanol plant or the soybean crush plant came online, that's competition. 

[Bettenhausen] Its competition, but it's also complimentary. Right? So right now, I mean, we just saw this out in South Dakota right now. We cannot like, there, there isn't rail, right. So when harvest came through, there wasn't a rail. I mean, we didn't have anything going out to the PNW. And so we had a local crush facility. That I mean, the local Co-Op, could not compete against the crush facility. And so what they were doing is they were honestly incentivizing people to use, like go through them to go to the crusher facility, because it was better for the farmer. And so I mean, it's, it's also another outlet for the ethanol plant for the crush facility. Because I mean, the mentality between an elevator and an end user is a lot different than some people give credit. And ethanol plant buys their crush, and that's it. They don't buy extra corn. They don't, they just don't. Right. Once they're at their crush, they don't need to buy anymore. And their basis reflects that. Right? If the elevator’s able to get a really good bid, they can put on another train, right, and they can put on another train and they can figure it out. And they can, I mean, we've got there's a plethora of piles out there. And so the elevator has a different, like it has the ability to help the ethanol plants, you know, in a time crunch saying, Hey, we really need to move this stuff. You know, farmers can't haul today because they're combining, but we need 50,000 - 100,000 trucks. Because we're not at our crush, you know, we're not under a crush capacity. Can you work with me? And so I mean, it's that the ethanol plants and the and the, you know, shuttle orders, they have a good relationship as well. The same thing was a farmer, I think that the only thing that separates a farmer was storage, and shuttle facility is rail access, you know, because if you are getting into that mentality of understanding how to use your storage as an elevator does, and using hedging practices, you should be okay. 

[Yeager] What's a hedge? Hedge practices?

[Bettenhausen] So a hedge is what you would do in the future. Now, and I know that sounds weird, but we'll get through it. So a hedge for corn if I'm a farmer, and I sell corn, I am naturally long corn or I own long and short are also words that I'll explain right now. So long is either having ownership or buying, short, is selling or not having right, so not having ownership. So if I'm a farmer, I mean, naturally long corn, I naturally have it because it's growing. I have it in my bin, XYZ, right? So the opposite to get to neutral, I have to sell it, right? So a hedge for a farmer that has corn would be to sell grain on the board. Paper, okay. And then when they actually deliver the grain, and they actually fulfill their cash contract, then they lift that hedge, they buy it back. That's the lifting of the hedges, so they buy it back and then  they have the cash like they have with their prices. And so it's a price protection mechanism, if you will, because you don't know what's going on with basis. You're just a basis trader at that point, which is just how the ethanol or how you know co-ops and everybody else uses it is that they're just basis traders. 

[Yeager] But so many of them get nervous when they sell something they don't have. It's still in the field. It's still green or brown, depending on the drought.

[Bettenhausen] Understandable, understandable. 

[Yeager] Dangerous area tho..

[Bettenhausen] I mean, there's risks with everything right. You know, futures and options offer unlimited risk, it may not be suitable for all investors, that's literally in anybody's disclosure that they see. And so understanding, you know, if I'm selling something, I'm hoping that you have to pay a margin call, like you're hoping that it continues to go up, but buy low, sell high. You know, if it continues to go up, then I'm paying a margin call. And if it doesn't, then I get money, but I get it, but I don't make it on the other side. I mean, it's kind of hard it's a hard way to go about it, but it gets scary. Getting through being scared is probably the biggest thing. And I don't know of any advisor that would advise their clients to be 100% hedged in I don't know, June, May, especially up here. I mean, our failed crop is zero. I mean, that's our failed crop, not it's that, you know, we make fun of Iowa, don't get me wrong, but we are field crop is nothing like we don't have an ear of corn, we don't have, you know, a little pod of beans, we like a thing. And so that is, you know, that's a real risk and having that risk coverage. It's just, it's just another tool in the toolbox. Like everybody else would say, it's just not a tool in the toolbox. Insurance is the same way. And so a lot of people will use their insurance guarantee as where they should be hedge.

[Yeager] Okay, so explain that one. Because that's a question we get to: what if I have my crop insurance? Is this because crop insurance is figured on different dates? And there's, there's those conspiracy theorists that say the price falls to this. So the insurance is only this, not this? And so, well, how am I using crop insurance in this discussion? 

[Bettenhausen] I don't know if that's, there's, there's conspiracy, but there's also a little bit of truth to it. So there is a certain level that, you know, if the prices go too high or too low, it is advantageous for the federal government to be in the market because they have to pay the premium. And so if they're in the market, then that means that there's more contracts, right. And so it's kind of going against it, but they're also protecting, being able to pay you at the end of the day. And so, a little bit of a conspiracy theory, yes. And there are some people that I would say, definitely have tin hats about it. But there is some, I would say validity to that. However, you know, let's say that you are a, I'm just going to use 100 bushels, because I mean, I know what I was, you know, the Garden State, but we'll just say 100 bushels. So like, if you have 100 bushels, you have 75% coverage, you were covered up to 75 bushels, right. And so you can kind of, you know, figure out what that means toward your market. If that is one contract or two contracts. That's the other thing that's hard with using paper is there in 5000 bushel increments. Now, granted, you can also do 2500, you can do minis, but, you know, for some smaller guys, you know, the two, three contracts, and they're they're already out there, max, right. And so, understanding that it is difficult, but something to work through. Another thing is you can use coops and use them as a hedging, but they always, like co ops always might your brain like they don't they, they love you. But they want your physical bushels, you know, that's kind of in there that's written in their description is to buy as many bushels at the largest margin. And so you know, how crop insurance kind of runs into it, and I'm not a crop insurance person, I have some very good friends that are and so I'm sure that they would be disappointed that I didn't listen to them more. But, um, crop insurance is kind of that coverage between the two. Right? So if you know if you get paid up to revenue you pay that back, I believe.

[Yeager] Yeah, that's how it is. That's what goes in times of years. When we're getting close to those insurance dates. We hear those questions. Okay. You talked about cash and futures. So when a price gets inverted, let's go back to that inverted discussion. Yeah, we're looking at months ahead at certain things to say, I'm feeling pretty good about myself. I'm gonna sell some '25. And then '26. What am I doing when I hear that when I'm throwing that term around? What's that mean?

[Bettenhausen] Depending upon where your elevators allowing you more than likely doing an HTA or, or hedge to arrive, which is basically a futures contract at the elevator again, heads to arrive, they want your cash grain, they want them like they want that. And so it's tied to physical bushels. So if we're looking at what is an inverted market, I guess you're kind of asking me two questions there.

[Yeager] I'm known for that, by the way, many questions. I'm known for that I asked a lot of questions. I should only do one at a time, Paul.

[Bettenhausen] I'll go back into Forward contracting. So the hardest part is knowing what your, obviously what your costs are, I think, I think one of the like, I'm gonna say, This is what a farmer should do. But like there's all of these are what farmers should do understand what your actual breakeven is. And it's not, it's not five cents better than what your neighbor sold it for. I'm just saying it might be, but it probably isn't. And so figuring out what your actual costs are, is very important. And then every sale that you make needs to go against that cost. So like, let's say, for example, if your breakeven is $4, and you make a $5 sale, you need to lower your breakeven cost, because it's no longer four. And so understanding that is really important. So when we're talking about '25, '26, we're, we're really just shooting in the dark to figure out where we're supposed to be. Um, but, you know, risk reward. Typically, within I think it's 18 months is what the status of 18 to 20 months, is typically the best time to market grain. I mean, we saw that in 2012, the best time to sell 2013 and 2014 was in the summer of 2012, I have a sign up here in my office that says that the high of corn was 697 and a quarter. And that was done April 27. of 2012. For the summer. I mean, that was the December high. And so we have to, it gets scary. And we have to consider, you know, what are the price is right now, maybe add a little inflation to it. And also, if we are less than that, then we addressed it. But you know, a lot of people are looking at 25 suffering. Now a lot of people are locking stuff in for 25. And once you do that, you need to protect the other side because I can, I'm 87% sure that some farmers are looking at their '25 inputs, and are like, man, these prices aren't where they're supposed to be, or where I need them to be. Right? I'm locking it in. And now my breakeven is five cash. And the board is telling me it's 517 or 514, I don't remember when it closed that today. But like, they're only 14 cents difference. And so understanding, hey, if I'm only 14 cents above right now, and that's where my price is, I might need to lock some in and then roll that around to pick up some more money. You know it figures out different mechanisms that we can use, maybe you use options, maybe you use calls, maybe use puts. 

[Yeager] alright, give me as we close because it mean we seriously could do this, we are going to have to do this again, Ashley because I get to the list. Let's close with calls and puts. Tell me the we have a couple of people that appear on the show that are very active in that arena.

[Bettenhausen] Okay, I'll give you the basics. Okay. So I think the hardest part about options is that people already have a predetermined definition of what that word means. Okay, and so we're just going to throw that away, we're going to forget about what the word put means and what the word call means. And so, a put, but we're talking about the buying side first, and then we'll go to the selling side, the buyer of a put is buying the right, but not the obligation to sell something at a certain price, okay? A buyer of a call is buying the right but not the obligation to buy something at a certain price. And so the buyer wants the market. So the person, the buyer of the call wants the market to go higher, the buyer of the pot wants the market to go lower, okay. And so because of how that works, you also need to have a seller of them as well. So a seller of a put is selling the right to somebody else. And they're holding on to the obligation if it gets exercise and they're getting a premium for it. So the buyers pay the premium, the sellers get the premium sellers of options, like the most that they'll make off of those options is the premium. So understanding that part I think, I think people get scared. You have to start I believe this and I have some really good trading friends that would disagree with me but anybody that starts with options has to start on the buying side to understand the selling side because of the risks that are in it. Right? If I, if I'm a buyer of an option, I know what my risk is, it is the premium. That's what my risk is, is I'm paying the premium. And whatever happens, that happens with it. Okay? And so I can exercise that if it's within, you know, my money, but I know what I paid for the seller isn't in the same situation. And so you're getting the premium, but you are on limited risk to the downside. And that is something that doesn't get talked about as much, I don't think. But that's the cookie cutter example.

[Yeager] So the premium, not all premiums are created equal.

[Bettenhausen] Not all premiums are created equal. Yes, sir. 

[Yeager] And we have a broker commentator on the program, an analyst that will often say, these calls or puts are cheap right now, or they're expensive right now. So, again, for those in the back...

[Bettenhausen]  Yeah. So there are different things that go into what the premium is, okay, one of the biggest things would be delta. And so a delta is the rate of change, if anybody remembers from their, like a calculus class. And so a delta at the money, so at the money means, like, where the market is trading right now. So if the market is trading at 510, and then you're working your allocation of 510, at the money, okay, and so you'll see that the delta is typically at 50%, point 5. Now, you also have this other thing, and it called a skew. And that's, that's for somebody smarter than me, but you also have skew that goes into it. Okay, so looking at the delta is probably your first area that you need to look at. The second area that you need to look at is implied volatility, or IV, marking that against your historical volatility. That's another thing. And you'll see that if you ever look at an options chart, you'll kind of see the puts the calls. And then in the middle, you'll see the list, the texts, if you will, you'll see where the numbers are, and then on the top, or wherever it is, it'll tell you what the historical volatility is. And then if you look, you'll see implied volatility, gamma theta, you'll see a lot of Greeks and so people, people trade the Greeks themselves. Some people are very, very sophisticated in that and they trade. They'll trade the gamma or they'll try to mind something, you know, you'll hear them using different terminology. That sounds bizarre.

[Yeager] They're the ones who I guess we could often call them the technical people, those they're the technical signals, not necessarily. It's dry in my cornfield, if there's something in the gamma that I like, and they computer program or their company, as that allows them to take advantage of. Yeah. Okay. I've been paying attention a tiny bit.

[Bettenhausen] I'm sure some of your commentators would be very proud.

[Yeager] I think. And I was just more of a general thing for this discussion. I'm always paying attention to the table. Sometimes I'm even writing notes down that say, get me out of here, Ted, it's time to go. And I hold that sign up like that. And he says things all right. As I looked to my left, we did not even get to stochastics, Black Swan, we did kind of talk about technicals. The Fibonacci targeting...

[Bettenhausen] Black swan is easy. Black Swan, easy. Black Swan is just an event that, you know, we really didn't see happening. So like the War, derecho of 2020, the war in Ukraine, the Trump tweets. You have a lot of black swan events that we've seen in those last couple of years that are so if you're a technical trader, you also understand that fundamentals. It doesn't like fundamentals will rule on that situation until they don't until they've ran out a story. And then they'll go technicals.

[Yeager] Yeah, that's the whole ‘the bulls need fresh news.’ That type of thing. Right. It's kind of when it runs out of that. We didn't get into the floater timer. Bollinger band, the spike. Yeah, yeah. And then bull spreading week Long's get stopped out inside days versus outside day. See, we're just getting started. Actually, that's it. That's an open invitation. We'll do this again sometime. 

[Bettenhausen] I would love to, Paul. 

[Yeager] My thanks to Ashley for her time and patience and all my craziness. Again if you have a question for us and you want us to ask it of Ashley put it in an email MarkettoMarket@IowaPBS.ORG. I look forward to hearing from you. And we'll see you next time.