The Thought-Leadership Goal of Progressive Futures
Hedging is an important concept for producers and one they should always use; however, production hedgers tend to think like speculators and that can be very dangerous.
At Progressive Futures, we spend as much time talking people out of speculating as we do to enter a hedge program. The reason is that the mind set for hedging is totally different than speculating. In most cases, producers who speculate end up not liking the result. When producers get hedging and speculating in the same account and the same program, they tend to end up not liking hedging either.
Progressive Futures uses a hedge program that attempts to provide “thought-leadership” for farmers in an effort to develop a strong hedging mindset that keeps speculating where it belongs, which is out of a hedge program. Farmers are already speculators and on top of that, they are always long wanting the market to go up. That can lead to a “buy only” mode when speculating which can keep them from using good selling programs to hedge the massive risk they have taken on.
“Thought-leadership” is a concept of helping producers to think through their risk position and how to reduce and provide profitable results in their marketing program.