Interview  |  AUG 2006

Interview: Glen Ring And His View On Futures by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan

Stocks & Commodities V. 24:8 (48-54): Interview: Glen Ring And His View On Futures by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan One of the nation’s most respected market analysts with 34 years of experience in the commodity industry, Glen Ring brings a broad-based perspective to his work. He has been a producer/hedger, broker, trader, technical analyst, researcher and seminar speaker, and from 1987 through 1997 he was editor of the successful Trends In Futures (previously titled Commodity Close-Up) newsletter before leaving to concentrate on his own newsletter, View On Futures. Currently, he is president of Glen Ring Enterprises, which focuses on providing information, education, research, and support for traders, analysts, and other participants in the futures industry. STOCKS & COMMODITIES Editor Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan spoke with Glen Ring in a phone interview on June 9, 2006. Q: Glen, how did you get started? A: I got interested in the markets when I was in high school in the early 1970s. Dad was a farmer, and I was in partnership with him raising livestock. He was aware of markets but not much, but he suggested that I keep an eye on them, so I did. About 1972, or shortly after, Successful Farming magazine had an article about the hog cycle. I think they called it a “three-and-a-half-year” cycle at the time. It made a lot of sense to me that every time prices were high, we didn’t have many hogs, and every time prices were low, we had a lot of hogs. Dad died when I was in college. I ended up farming and going to college at the same time, running back and forth 300 miles on the weekends. He had been sick for years and we were in debt. I could see I wasn’t going to be able to outproduce other farmers who were in better financial shape than I was. That, together with my being intrigued with the commodity markets, was what really got me started. I felt I had my best chance to outmarket people.

by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan