It’s a simple supply and demand problem that will get worse over the coming decades unless huge change takes place.
Access to good wholesome and healthy food and water already is and will be based upon a families financial situation. The traders have nothing to do with this.
Even in developed countries its only the rich that can afford to pay the higher price for organic chemical and pesticide free products or afford to buy a house in the mountains with good clean well water. The poor eat much worse and drink flouridated and chlorinated water from municipal water treatment plants.
The earth and it’s weather are changing and top soil is being lost at record paces. Water to grow crops is often scarce and expensive. Also it’s important to understand that governments are often the cause of higher prices in commodities. There are countless crazy deals, laws, and regulations that inflate prices. This happens all over the world even in America. Do a little research on the insanity that has been going on in the US sugar market. The sugar cartel and their lobbyist have artificially inflated the price with the help of the US government. Once you start investigating and researching, it’s quite obvious that placing the blame on individual futures traders is like blaming the dog for the rain. The same corruption, lobbying, and nasty deals that make the sugar cartel rich in the video below happens with ALL COMMODITIES, not just sugar. The big commercials form cartels and invest huge amounts of money wining - dining and bribing politicians. The end result is always higher prices for the consumers and processors.
When it comes to futures markets, the ignorant finger pointers don’t have any idea of the real market forces and blindly blame to individual traders. Far far more damage is done by the legalized fraud the big commercials and bankers commit. Then there’s the elephant in the room of HFT. Talk about artificially inflating prices, there’s nothing that comes close to the damage being done by these algo’s. High frequency trading accounts for more that 50% of all trades on the equity markets, and I think its much higher in the less regulated forex and futures markets.
Compare all this to your retail futures trader who rarely if ever holds a position overnight. In other words, he may sell, but he buys it right back before the day is over. No net position and no real effect on price. You can argue that he takes the price up when he buys a few contracts, but then he also takes it right back down when he sells those same contracts a few hours later. It’s a wash.
To get an idea of what has been going on in the sugar industry and likewise with ALL COMMODITIES I highly recommend the following video:
HH: What you’re talking about ultimately has little to do with speculators. The speculators are the last link in a chain of bad decisions that was made well before them.
Take a month of paid leave, a month of unpaid leave and that will be two whole months beautiful vacation for me if I stumble upon 100K without any obligation moral or otherwise.
During most my years teaching English, I had about three months off a year. Now at a local company, I get 5 days plus the 1-day holidays every now and then. Sometimes I still regret leaving that job lol…
During most my years teaching English, I had about three months off a year. Now at a local company, I get 5 days plus the 1-day holidays every now and then. Sometimes I still regret leaving that job lol…[/quote]
I am not exactly sure about the exact number of years but as far as I can remember, after working for a company for two years, you can claim two weeks of paid leave. Check it out. Although two weeks are nothing compared to three full months especially if you love travelling.
buy a second hand Volkswagen T4 for 60-70k, pay an insurance, plate, gasoline and start tour across the island.
If something goes wrong, just resell the car :discodance:
if you are less than 25 years old, don worry too much. have fun !
if you have less than 6 month living expenses savings,
let it at the bank (take a one year deposit that will give you a poor 1.2%)
6 month is average, it could be less if your family can help you in case or troubles, or more if other peoples depends on you financially ( kids/wife/parents)
if you have more than 6 month living expenses savings, just invest it…
there are plenty of books about that, make enough research to make you own idea
(Don’t put everything into the same basket, mix between housing/cash/bounds/stocks/gold/commodities invest in several currencies, be careful to the fees, )
there is just so many ways to answer this question its crazy
1 . safe thing to do is to buy a bank certificate which will only give u about 4% to maybe 6% depending on what country/bank u choose.
2. Most people online or in the world would say to buy gold, and its true, if u did it lets say 10 years ago (2004 1once of gold sale for 400usd) your 100k would increase to 350,000nt (now 1 once is 1400usd). amazing huh? but to be honest with u i dont like doing gold investment bc u cant eat gold and i dont understand why people picked this one metal to be so expensive and desirable, i think its stupid, i am not a gold investor)
3. this is my favorite option which is KICKSTARTER or backing someone already trying to grow or start something big that u see a future in. that way u can be more involve with the project instead of waiting (in option 1) and/or hoping (in option 2) for ur money to grow.
it all depends on how much time do u want to spend investing the money, and how are you living right now.
Since it’s a small amount of money, I’d say the best thing to do with it is throw it in something that has a chance to really multiply for you. Convert it to USD and open a trading account like TD Ameritrade or Interactive Brokers.
Then put the entire sum into January 2015 30$ long Calls in SH (Short S&P 500) which are trading at about 2.30$ right now.
If in the next year and a half we get a decent market sell off like we saw in 2010, 2011, and 2012, you could quite easily double or triple that money. If you happen to get really lucky and we get a real recession type sell off you could really multiply that money.
Obviously the risk is a 100% loss 611 days from now, but the reward is several times your initial investment, so from a risk / reward standpoint it’s a pretty good trade as far as “gamble trades” go.
If you really don’t want to risk the money but still want a decent investment, you could simply buy the shares in SH instead and wait. You could also sell covered calls around your position and get some monthly premium coming in. Obviously stocks could go higher and probably will, but in the long run it’s very unlikely that we won’t see some kind of sell off that brings your trade profitable.
Nearly a month into the trade I recommended, and just in case you actually did put your money there it would be responsible of me to do a little follow up. (anybody can call out trades, but what really matters is how you manage them once you’re in it)
The trade is up a little over 20% as of now so this is always the time that these types of options require a decision. Because it’s just a straight call they are what’s called Theta negative. The more time that passes the more money you lose, all other things being equal. Since we are right at a fairly crucial technical level here you’d probably want to wait and see what happens in the next day or two.
If we bounce off the 50 day moving average it’s quite likely the pullback in stocks is over and we may retrace back up to the yearly highs. If that happens close the trade out for a small profit and wait to get back into the same trade in a month or two at a better premium.
If we get a close below that 50 day it’s quite likely stocks will continue to slide and you’d have a nice trade on your hands.
