"If you plan for a year, plant rice; if you plan for a decade, plant trees; if you plan for a lifetime, educate people."
— Chinese Proverb
An impressive young lady
Take a look at this video, she absolutely nails the landing — under the highway signs. All while keeping cool as cucumber as the engine dies. I didn’t detect any noticeable stress, where I might have been pounding on the gauge and screaming at it to turn back on. Then probably just given up and looked for the nearest area of concentrated datacenters and flock cameras. I kid. I kid. That was a joke.
Banderols
You may hear the term Banderol. A new Russian missile that’s faster than a Shahed drone, carries a larger payload (150 kg), but costs less than $300,000 to make. Which means it’s not worth shooting down with a Patriot interceptor. This is hugely problematic for static infrastructure like, say, a port facility or softseed processing plant.
Maybe it’s a moot point since Trump won’t be giving Ukraine Patriots, only photo shoots for social media content, and the USA may or may not have many available. We’ve warned that the gloves were coming off, and this fall is shaping up to be the worst of the war yet.
A “John Anthony” Week
This is a warning: a John Anthony week is typically followed by the bad kind of John Anthony week.
PSA Warning: Mean reversion suggests next week is far more likely to look like Amir calling from a phone booth in a fit of broken rage than $20 large on Texas sipping Piña Coladas. I urge you to tread lightly.
Rarely does everything sort of work. It might be karma after feeling like it was 0/10 in the month of June. It’s been tough to hang onto gains with the severity of the setbacks. I have written about that frustration. It’s nice to be reminded AiQ’s processes continue to improve.
Long Biases
Platinum +6.7%
Canola +2.7%
SoyOil +1.2%
Cotton +3.3%
Sugar +12.6%
Rice +2.1%
KC Wheat +0.85%
Palm Oil +0.8%
Short Biases
Soybeans -1%
Live Cattle -0.8%
This ain’t happening again in 2026, so let’s enjoy it. I make a lot of bad calls. I’ll take 6/10 every week.
The last two weekends I bought crude calls into the weekend. Yesterday, I did the opposite and bought puts for no other reason than I hope I am wrong again. You can deduce why from the makeup of the biases above — a humble sacrifice to the trading Gods.
This serves as a reminder that the most effective way to put yourself in a position to make the right decision is to block out the noise. I’m making an effort to avoid the FERPs on X — obviously I’m the idiot for engaging in the first place. In my defense, earlier this year I tried to share some insights.
Thank You for Attending AiQ’s Crop Tour
2026 is a highly variable year and crop tours/yield guesses are a waste of time and, more importantly, a complete distraction: a meaningless guessing game. I shared some thoughts this week in the AiQ chat, and price action was vindicating.
The money will be made fading the noise or the WASDE next week if traders are forced to chase a surprise. Soybeans were the anchor on the ag complex as suggested.
Did you notice that I’m not bothering with any serious Pre-WASDE analysis? I will have some comments out the night before.
The opposite of the “Hang it in the Louvre” is the “Toss it in the Waste Bin.”
I covered the Banderols it’s a reminder that offense in modern warfare is very hard. Defense and destruction are very straightforward.
Each week that goes by is one week closer to the commodity Minsky Moment. Staying alive is half the battle. That’s how I am approaching the Black Sea situation.
Other topics for the week:
AiQ Intern Wanted: We need your help
Week 31 weather: India, Indonesia, and Canada are the focus
How to think about wheat supply and price shocks, or any other commodity.
Full cotton review, bull and bear inputs
Precious Metals: why they’re rallying and may have staying power
Consequences: Japan and the Strait of Hormuz
Everything wrong summed up in one article, I summarized it for you
The AI Macro Narrative: I can’t figure out if we’re building anything not called “data centers”
CF Industries’ earnings are a reminder of how Washington policies impact real consumers.
Intern Wanted
We need an intern or interns depending on the candidates. Whether it is paid or simply a learning experience depends on the qualifications. A background in agronomy, weather, machine learning, financial markets, poker, options, LLMs, big data, and neural networks a plus.
They will get a deep dive into supply and demand models, signal generation, weather (statistical modeling), options, global cash markets, risk management across a broad spectrum of commodities, and much more. The candidate will work directly on trading implementation and a custom full stack platform, which means, Devin, the genius CTO.
If you know someone, please reach out at nico@archaiq.ai. Share this post with anyone, who might know someone. Please and thank you.
Weather Risks — Week 30
Improved: Australia (2)
Deteriorated: Argentina (2), Indonesia (4), India (4)
Weather this week deteriorated from a week ago when many regions improved, led by the 180-degree flip in the US forecast. Since then, more than 60% of the soybean area will receive >50 mm.
You’ll also notice I’m not talking about crop tours and yield guesses. The methodology most companies use is flawed, and that’s all I have to say about that.
