Seasonality  |  MAR 2001

Beans In The Teens by Emil van Essen

It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year - Beans In The Teens Most years about this time, there’s an opportunity in soybeans. by Emil van Essen I t’s about that time of year again, when soybean traders wake up and wonder whether this will be the spring that brings another wild, stomach-churning, and profitable (for some) bull market. One time-honored system with a great track record is certainly pointing to that possibility (Figure 1). The system shown here only takes long positions, and only in February. The strength of the system is in identifying the characteristics of an impending bull market very early in the season, before most traders have entered the market. Here’s how the soybean system works, for those not familiar with the tradable. The system buys a 50-day high in February as long as there was not a major high last year. Initially, a stop is placed at the 50-day low but rises to a 10-day low after June 1. I used a continuous contract of soybean prices to test this idea.

by Emil van Essen