U.S. farmers harvested some of the largest corn and soybean crops in history this year. The timing couldn’t be much worse for farm incomes and commodity prices. And for shares of farm stocks.
Pretty much everything got clobbered today after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell promised that the Fed would raise interest rates and keep them high until inflation is under control. In other words, no quick turn to cutting interest rates in the second half of 2023. So chip stocks were down today, August 26, with Nvidia (NVDA) plunging 9.23% at the close. Consumer stocks were down with Shake Shack (SHAK) tumbling 8.61%. Financial technology stocks were down with Block (SQ) shedding 7.72%. Climate change stocks, an extremely hot sector lately, were down with EVgo (EVGO) bleeding 7.86%. Hide in gold? No way. The SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD) was down 1.22%. (Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, I suppose.) But agricultural commodity ETFs? Green in a sea of red.
Barclays has suspended sales of 30 ETNs including the iPath Series B Bloomberg Agriculture Subindex ETN. That has increased the volatility of the ETN and so I’m selling it out of my Jubak Picks Portfolio and replacing it with the Invesco DB Agriculture Fund ETF.
