Most of the readers of this website will most likely not really care about the following entry, but I thought that I would give you an idea of the things I look at all the time. Today was the release of the crop plantings intentions from the USDA. It has been a widely anticipated report and to make a long story short, was not favorable to the market. It showed that US farmers intend to plant more grain than was originally forcasted and grains got hit hard today with corn leading the parade with a limit down open and a limit down close:

As I mentioned, it was corn that got hit the hardest. There is many school of thoughts on corn right now. There are (were) the extreme bulls who thought we would inch our way up to $5 a bushel because of the ethanol boom and inability to produce enough corn to meet demand and those that don’t agree. I happen to believe that while the report showed we are going to produce more corn than first thought, this just increases the profitability of ethanol plants with dropping corn prices and increasing ethanol and oil prices. Being the circle that it is, we will just produce more ethanol plants and increase the demand for corn. Bearish now, bullish later. If you took every corn bushel in the US today and made it all into ethanol it would only account for 18% of total gasoline usage. Therefore, it doesn’t take many more ethanol plants to use 50%+ of all corn as next year we are anticipated to use 30%+ already. Again, bearish now, bullish later.

This is what the chart for the May 2007 Corn futures looks like. We are technically and fundamentally in a down range. Where is the bottom, no one knows. Rule is, if we drop below the 61.8% retracement then we test the old lows. It will be anything but boring for me in the next while! But then again, when is what I do for a living ever boring!

Tammy and I decided what we really wanted to do to celebrate our anniversary was watch ‘many’ movies up in Edmonton where we got engaged! So that is what we did! We stayed at West Edmonton Mall in the best room money could buy there and watched movies. Here is the list and my comments:

• 300 - This movie could be summed up in one word….unbelievable! It was the first movie we watched and managed to see it on the Imax screen. The screen is 6 stories high and has over 21,000 watts of sound. Being strange, we sat near the front and screwed up our eyesight! This movie is about the 300 Spartan warriers that stood against their enemies of 10,000+. Really wicked movie that scores 9.5 out of 10 in my book.
• Blood Diamond - Wasn’t in the theatre, but Pay Per View. We watched this movie and Leo really made this movie amazing. A truely crazy story that shows the problems with Africa that most people are ignorant to. The second best movie we watched all weekend in my opinion and worth a 9 out of 10.
• Shooter - This movie has Mark Wahlburg in it and was about sniper shooting. I liked it more than Tammy did, but worth an 8 out of 10 anyways!
• Premonition - This movie started a little slow and then got really interesting in quick fashion! The middle of the movie was unbelievable and then it ended. My opinion is that the ending was a little detached and could have been easily written better. It is why I score it a 7.5 out of 10 and with the alternate ending I imagined in my head, it was a 8.5 out of 10. This movie is worth watching, but rent it….
• Casino Royale - Being a huge bond fan and a poker fan, this had a start that should have been amazing for me! Really being truthful here, I was disappointed. I kept saying to myself that “007″ wouldn’t do that and surely not that…either way, it was OK. 7 out of 10 is the best I can do and that was streching it for me.
• Holiday - This movie was so boring that I fell asleep and got the end of the story from my wife in the morning. I really wasn’t that disappointed that I fell asleep and she finished the story for me in 30 seconds. Not much of a thriller after watching so many violent movies! However, even though I didn’t really enjoy it, I cannot in good faith give it less than 6 out of 10 since I fell asleep and really don’t know……

We hadn’t been to a movie in 6 months before this and spent over $100 in movies. Cheap fun for a weekend that most wouldn’t really enjoy, but my wife and I loved it!