we bought a lot of cattle to go on feed in the last 10 days and turned right around and got put options under them at levels that ensure a profit in the 7-10% range (that's 15-20% annualized) and still have all the upside potential. fear has irrationaly pushed down real prices in many instances and created good opportunities to buy a profit. this is a welcome opportunity if one has had to absorb some red ink on portions of inventory that may have been unprotected. things went way down very quickly, money was lost, cattle lost value, including cattle owned by us. some of those cattle were marketed in windows where they lost money. in a couple instances of poor market management, they lost a lot of money per head. i have found though in this business, there is no shortage of producers that are so "doom and gloom" they seem to get get something very gratifying out of being a self-fulfilling prophecy and fall all over themselves to puke up their cattle irrationally once the market turns upside down. this confuses me, the romance of the lost cause is lost on me. I'm not saying hold on to inventory and ride it down to zero, many cattle needed to be sold and many lost money. what i am saying though is that the board has been over sold and is being used as leverage to beat the real price of feeders to where they can be bought to make money more consistently than when they were $30/cwt. higher. this isn't magic, calculators are $8.99 at the drug store.
