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Still sitting on the sidelines. Late in the night I heard on the news the price of crude, high 60's I believe. The thought came to me maybe I ought to buy some Exxon. Around noon when everything seemed to be hitting the lows for the day, I couldn't remember that stock.

After closing, it came to me so I googled it; some think it might be good. I will have to do more research on it. It's at high 80's and I don't like buying stocks over $50 because it seems riskier and uses up too much of my capital for "playing" in the market. Just haven't felt like "playing" in it.

Also I have 10,000 bu of corn I don't know what to do with. I contacted someone in an ag hedge fund but then I thought I'm tired but would have to learn how to do it myself plus they would probably charge an arm and a leg to invest my money for me.

I realized when corn was $2.99 that I should have gotten someone to get some options for me only I got puts mixed up with calls. I should have bought a bunch of calls. My grain rep told me puts go down and calls go up. Is that right?

I don't like paying for storage for too long but it occurred to me that I have a commodity that has intrinsic value which would possibly be a hedge against inflation but I can't wrap my mind around that and food prices. It's terrible the prices of groceries and they are way out of sync with other sectors of the economy except possibly for meat because so many sold off their cattle during the drought 2 years back.

Corn and soybeans are forecast to stay fluctuating but around where they are now into 2020. Then I read to watch oats but forgot what the connection would be with that.

Good morning and IBD's outlook is now officially "Market Under Pressure"! Stock indexes fell nearly 2% w/ the NY exchange in higher volume. The good news is that today's futures see a rebound and 2-1/2 hr before opening indexes are up +0.19%. Metals show a reverse image --futures down this AM after yesterday's leap. Huge day today for reports:

8:30 AM Initial Claims
8:30 AM Continuing Claims
8:30 AM Retail Sales
8:30 AM Retail Sales ex-auto
8:30 AM Export Prices ex-ag.
8:30 AM Import Prices ex-oil
10:00 AM Business Inventories
10:30 AM Natural Gas Inventories

Lurkina.n.Learnin nailed it when he said "this rally is getting a little long in the tooth" but there's lots of news/threads anyway:

Stocks plunge as oil tumbles 4%; Dow down 268 USA TODAY - 9:33am Plunging oil prices took a heavy toll on Wall Street Wednesday as fears of a slowdown in the energy sector sent stocks to their biggest drop in two months and pushed crude oil to a new five-year low.
Asia down as oil fall hits sentiment, dollar gets respite Asian stocks fell on Thursday as falling oil prices added to global growth concerns, while the dollar saw a bit of a respite against the yen and euro after successive sharp losses. Spreadbetters expected ...
What happens to society when robots replace workers?
Minimum wage dissent: San Jose's law resulted in lost jobs [many restaurants cut jobs and hours]
Plummeting Oil Prices Could Destroy The Banks That Are Holding Trillions In Commodity Derivatives

As a long-term investment, XOM is one of the best there is. Remember, they not only explore for oil, they refine it and market it. That is to say, they have several segments from which to add value - exploration, production, transportation, manufacturing (refining), and marketing.

It’s not like a pure play in one segment of the business only.

--and this morning futures traders see grains soaring and meats tanking.

IBD has very little in the way of good news about Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), horrible earnings, poor stock performance. True, institutions are favoring Exxon relatively speaking, but that's becuase they're dumping other oil stocks more. Out of 197 industry sectors IBD ranks oil/gas down at 190.

Yuck.

Not to worry, my thinking this AM is that in a week or two we'll see plenty of great buying opportunities in the stronger sectors, here're the returns over the past 3 months: