When I graduated from college, I was a commodity futures broker for eight years, Evans said in a recent interview with Farm Press.
Before transitioning into the family farm in the early 90s, Evans received his bachelor s in agricultural business and economics from West Texas A&M University, Canyon. I ve been around the markets my entire adult life, he said.
When people think of marketing, they often think of selling commodities at a good price, he says. But I promise you, I m the last one who knows what the market s going to do.
For years, Evans made marketing decisions based on what he thought the markets might do. But that wasn t a successful strategy. Irrelevant to what you think the market s going to do, you need to have a plan and make decisions to be profitable on your farm.
Gambling is a venture without calculation; speculation is a venture with calculation. Dickson G. Watts
Being a self-professed speculator in the junior mining space for the past forty-odd years, I used to include that quote in every client letter and in every research piece as a means of reminding readers that the art of speculation involves weighing many different but converging data points. That quote was the brainchild of Dickson G. Watts, an exceedingly successful speculator from the late 1800s and former president of the New York Cotton Exchange, whose book Speculation as a Fine Art and Thoughts on Life is a must-read for anyone involved in the financial markets.