The Grain Trader's Manual

You begin in Chicago in the spring with $2,400 in cash, a $1,200 crop lien at the bank, a leased boxcar that holds 3,000 bushels, and a credit standing of 55 out of 100. Your net worth on day one is $1,200.

You get one market day per week for a season you choose, anywhere from sixteen weeks to thirty-two. Sixteen is tight — two harvests and no room to be wrong twice. Twenty-four is the full growing season. Beyond that you are trading into the fall marketing months, when the crop actually moves, which gives storage, credit and patience time to matter and gives a corner time to be built. At the end everything is marked to the closing board, the lien is deducted, and what's left is your score.

Why bid and ask can sit below the futures. In the row above, wheat futures read 128.4 but the bid is only 110.4. Two things did that: the basis is 14.7 under, and the offered grade multiplies the price. Bid and ask are always quoted at the grade on offer, so a No. 3 week quotes lower than a No. 1 week for exactly the same grain.

To buy: type bushels into the row's box, or hit Max and trim it, then Buy. To sell, use the Your Grain ledger underneath — each lot sells separately, whole or half, and only in the city where it sits.

Every price on every board is built from two numbers:

These are two different games and you can play both. Trading the basis is steady, low-risk, and pays for your groceries: buy where the basis is weak, carry it a week, sell where it's strong. Trading the futures is where fortunes are — you buy before a drought develops and sell into the panic — and it is where seasons are lost.

Each city has permanent appetites. Cedar Rapids always pays up for oats because the cereal mills are there. Milwaukee always wants barley. Peoria wants corn for the distillers. Duluth wants flax. Wichita discounts nearly everything, which is why it's the cheapest place to store.

Every lot you own has a grade as well as a quantity. It is worth real money:

• You buy whatever's offered. The Offered column is set by the region's crop condition and how wet the week was. Good country, good grades.
• Grain slides in storage. A wet week where your grain is sitting can knock part of a lot down a grade. Damp grain heats. This is the game's version of getting mugged — except you can see it coming, and moving to drier country is a real defense.
• Blending is the trick. Run equal parts No. 1 and No. 3 of the same grain together and the whole thing comes out No. 2. Two lots nobody especially wants become one lot everybody buys, usually for more than the parts. Perfectly legal. Roughly one time in six a house man notices and your credit takes a permanent small scratch.

What to do with this. Two regions matter more than the others and for opposite reasons. The Northern Plains is the only place flax and barley come from in quantity, so a single bad northern season moves those two prices further than anything else on the board — and flax has the thinnest supply in the game, which makes it the practical corner target. The Corn Belt is the opposite: five cities, the deepest markets, and enough acreage that it takes a real disaster to move corn.

Also note what a region doesn't grow. A drought in the Lake States does nothing at all to your flax. Selling wheat into Kansas City during its own harvest is selling into the one market that has too much of it.

How to read the bars. Moisture drives condition with a lag. Moisture falling through the middle of the range is the early warning: condition hasn't broken yet, prices haven't moved yet, and grain is still cheap. That is the moment to buy. By the time the condition bar is rust-colored and the wire is shouting about rust and grasshoppers, the price already reflects it.

And know when to get out. A drought that breaks — one soaking week in week 14 — unwinds a whole bull market in days. Bull markets in grain die suddenly and always have.

• Harvest timing scales with your season. The Kansas wheat harvest always lands about a quarter of the way in and corn always comes off near the end, whether the season is sixteen weeks or thirty-two. A longer season means longer gaps between the shocks, not more of them.
• Every trip costs one week. Near or far, you're back on the wire in a week — farther cities just cost more in fare, not more time.
• The fare scales with what you're hauling. A full string of cars costs real money to move. It rises during a rail strike, and it doubles on any leg touching a struck city.
• Wire ahead for $40. Click a city, then Wire ahead, and you see its prices before committing the week. Cheap. Use it constantly — it is the difference between trading and guessing.
• Sitting tight is free. No fare, no destination. If you're holding a position into a developing drought, sitting is often the correct play.

Credit is also money. Low standing means worse bid/ask quoted to you and a higher interest rate on the lien. Repaying the lien in chunks raises it. Delivering clean raises it. It compounds as surely as the debt does.

• Hold 35% of the visible supply of one commodity — cars and every bin, counted together — and the option appears when you are in Chicago.
• Visible supply shrinks in a short crop. This is the crucial design: cornering is only realistic in a drought year, when supply contracts and you're already holding. The two halves of the game meet here.
• The payout is enormous. Shorts settle at a squeeze price of roughly 1.35× to 2.8× the futures, depending on how much of the market you have. Everything you hold sells at once.
• Then the Committee sits. The odds of it going badly run from about 12% to 92%, driven by your share, your credit, and every inspector you ever paid off. Go badly and it costs 45% of your cash and effectively all your standing.
• The price collapses afterward either way. That's fine — you aren't holding any.

The small commodities are the practical targets: flax and soybeans have the thinnest visible supply, so a terminal house full of flax in a bad northern year is a genuine corner. Wheat is the famous one and needs far more grain.

At the close of the final week, cash and deposits are counted, grain is marked to market less 4% for having to dump it, and the lien is deducted. You cannot hoard your way to a win — carrying a huge position into settlement costs you that 4%.

• The first quarter of the season: grind the basis, buy the first upgrade. Look for a commodity where this city's basis is deeply negative and a neighbor's is positive. Wire ahead before you commit. Get to 7,500 bushels of capacity as fast as you can — small capacity is the reason early weeks feel poor.
• The second quarter: learn the map's appetites. Cedar Rapids for oats, Milwaukee for barley, Peoria for corn, Duluth for flax, Minneapolis for wheat. Buying those grains anywhere else and delivering them there is a repeatable trade, not a lucky one.
• Watch the moisture bars the whole time. The instant one region's moisture starts falling week over week, buy that region's crop before the condition bar moves.
• Weeks 8 onward: press the weather. If a drought is developing, borrow into it, fill the cars, and sit tight. This is where the money is. If instead the country stays green, don't force it — keep grinding the basis and stay small.
• The last few weeks: get flat, or get greedy on purpose. Either sell down before settlement's 4% haircut, or, if you're holding a third of a short crop, take the train to Chicago and ring the bell.

• Trading without wiring ahead. $40 to see the other board is the best-value item in the game and most players never buy it.
• Staying small too long. A 3,000-bushel car can't out-earn the lien. Buy the first capacity upgrade even if it feels early.
• Buying the drought after the wire announced it. By then it's in the price. Buy when the moisture bar turns, not when the headline does.
• Holding through the break. Grain bull markets end in a week. If a drought region gets a soaking, sell into the first day of strength, not the third.
• Bribing the inspector out of habit. Each one is cheap. Together they're what makes the Committee end your season.