for the recent changes in your life. My experience, Life usually treats a good person good-----even if the markets don't. In case you are wondering about my absence-----I spent the first three months of the year making an extra effort adding to my client base. I have a distaste for sales and have tried to avoid it as much as possible because I'm a poor salesman. I have a habit of not telling people what they want to hear but telling them what they need to hear. I started getting a lot of referrals from my current clients telling me I should talk to this guy or that guy because they do a poor job of marketing.

To make a long story short, I spent more time on the phone making contact with new potentials due to the big list I had acquired. That forced me on the road with more meetings which lead to more contacts. April was too wet so farmers took the time for meetings. I didn't plan to try and double my client base that had slowly grown to a comfortable income over the last 5-6 years. I was comfortable because I was doing well, not overworked, and time to focus on my trading. Well, it hit me in April that I had miraculously Doubled my client base in 3 months. It also Doubled my income which was fine with me------then I began to realize I had Doubled my Workload.

I don't mind hard work but I didn't have time to spare to focus on my trading other than some of my recs I was giving producers. That was only in the corn and cattle markets which have rewarded me very well-----I saw no need for hog producers to do any hedging so my rec was to stay with cash for my rec. I didn't trust the hog market to take long positions and I didn't have time to get (In The Zone) to trade it anyway. The Northbound overloaded and now the market has dug its way back to the basement. Doesn't surprise me but I wasn't able to trade it except for 1 producer that I had throw some sell stops @ 87.72. I didn't even have time to take part in the forum conversation because I was always on the phone until today. I finally hit a day that I have time to catch my breath. I have all my producers situated with 40-50% of their corn sold around a 4.40 board average and another 20-25% hedged between 4.50-4.68. That's after they stuck 70-80 cents of profit from old crop they bot between 3.51-3.65.

It wasn't as easy as it sounds or looks from the charts. The month of April was an exhausting month of anxiety and the last 5 weeks have been jubilation but very little time to enjoy. It has been work keeping my head screwed on straight and producers from letting emotions rule but fun work at that. I never was able to ride my cattle/hog spread I caught it several times but wasn't able to hang on. I did ride a $15 Flush on the June cattle, so it's doesn't matter that I missed the spread. I had too many challenges to tend to, so I was never bored.