Markets with a Calendar
Some markets live by the calendar. Corn and soybeans follow the planting-growing-harvest cycle. Heating oil demand peaks with winter, gasoline with the summer driving season. Natural gas storage fills and draws on a schedule you can nearly set a watch by. Seasonal charts make those rhythms visible: the average price path of a market across 5, 15, or 30 years, laid over the current year so you can see whether prices are following the script or breaking from it.
- 5-year seasonals — the recent regime, useful when market structure has shifted
- 15-year seasonals — the working standard for most grain and energy analysis
- 30-year seasonals — the long arc, smoothing out individual extreme years
How We Use Seasonals in Hedging
For producers, seasonals answer a practical question: is the market offering me a historically good price for this time of year? When a Scale-In hedge is on the table, the seasonal view is one of the first things we look at together. Seasonal strength into harvest is normal; seasonal weakness before planting is normal; knowing what normal looks like keeps you from mistaking an ordinary dip for a disaster.