Darin Newsom

I am not a trader. I am not an economist. I am an analyst and a commentator who, over the last 30-plus years, has built my own way of analyzing markets. That being the case, I won’t tell you something is important when it isn’t. Instead I will keep you informed on my read of what the market is trying to tell us. A little on my background. I grew up on a small farm in southern/southwest Kansas. Through college and shortly thereafter, I worked at the local cooperative, running fertilizer tanks and dumping trucks during the busy summer season. While doing this, the conversations I had with farmers were almost always the same. “Why is the market doing what it’s doing?” they would ask. Then came October 1987 and Black Monday. The week prior I had a gut feeling the stock market was going to go down. At the time I knew nothing about why, only that there was something telling me this was going to happen. One early morning before I headed out to the elevator, I stopped by the in-house commodity office and opened an account. I told the broker what I thought would happen, and he had me buy an S&P 500 put option that expired that week. A couple other customers who were sitting in the commodity office overheard our conversation, and also bought S&P puts. The week before Black Monday saw global markets get hit hard, and our put options gained in value. Yes, I got out of the position before it expired, and celebrated with tacos at the local establishment. The next Monday, Oct. 19, the stock market completely collapsed. Had I known more about what I was doing I could’ve rolled the put options forward and made a small fortune. But I really didn’t think about that at the time. What interested me more was the “what.” What made markets do what they do? Since then my goal has been to explain the “what” and not worry about the “why.” This journey led me to working as a commodity broker in Wichita, Kansas, a couple of times, as well as back in my home town of Lewis, Kansas, a grain merchandiser for a couple co-ops in central Kansas, and a market adviser. Then came the opportunity of a lifetime, to be the grains analyst at an electronic media company based out of Omaha, Nebraska. I joined DTN in early 2004, and for the next 14 1/2 years worked hard to provide my analysis and commentary to a growing customer base. Along the way, while meeting and visiting with thousands of farmers, ranchers, merchandisers, etc. in the ag industry, I also had the opportunity to work with some of the best people in ag media. I will always think of them as family, even after parting ways with the company in June 2018. And now I’m here, running my own website, offering the same sort of analysis and commentary that I’ve always done. My idea has always been, will always be, to make commentary not only informative but entertaining as well. There is so much out there that is boring, that focuses on the wrong things. I’ve always tried to change that. Thank you for your time, and your subscription. Now, let’s find out what the markets are saying, shall we?