Nic,

You not one of my favorite posters, but I am going to take time to explain.. not to you, but others that read your comment the truth.

To be clear about one point for the benefit of others that be as confused as you about my comment ""Media has no access to fundamentals". I am not sure that is how I phrased it, but my effort was to explain that the media does not have access to the fundamentals from sources that are knowledgeable. In the case of meats that would be the Major Packers and Major Retail. There will always be groups that offer input as to what they "think" retail or the packers are doing, but without facts to back up their thoughts.

What the media will find as an alternative to factual information is often referred to as "taking heads". They will make for some amusing stories, but not factual fundamentals. I could give any examples of media reporting, but it not important to bash the media. They do the best they can with what they have to work with, and in many cases it serves the purpose. The purpose is to give people something to think about, and if they are really interested it is up to them to find the "facts".

There is a reason the media does not have access, and that is because of past media spin that takes the message they are given out of it's context by reporters that want to jazz up the information. This causes a big headache for the majors to clear up misunderstanding. Bottom line it is not worth it, so they do NOT speak to the media.

Packers and Retail have a big enough job not to slow down just to educate commodity traders on fundamentals. What ever they try to explain they would be explaining to a wide audience. Better to just do their job, and let the commodities brokers, and media do their's.

I found their information vital, and I took years in developing a relationship where I could talk openly with these sources, and even opened accounts with some of the largest, even though they had their own memberships to the exchanges, in some cases. I also had to sign disclosures not to reveal their information or name to the media, or public. That was OK with me because I found the information more helpful than to risk it spouting off what we had discussed.

So my comment was to let people know the media stories do not have the fundamental information, or enough to give the real fundamental story.

I shared as much as I could with this forum, and even pointed out the beginning of the biggest bull move cattle had ever seen starting in DEC 98". I even tried to help people understand the "real" fundamentals over the BS stories from people like Teri. That alone should give you a hint of why sources do not speak to the media, because there are always people around that want to distort facts to fit their bias. At times on this forum I always showed why the USDA reports were flawed, and the experts the were guessing the reports were going to be wrong. I even went so far to explain what an upcoming report should read, and it was far off the mark of the experts. My numbers were right on, and the media wrote about the "big" surprise.

This, I hope explains, why I say things like the media does not have access to the fundamentals.. Because they don't. Look back at the media stories that gave the guesses of the price range of the coming year. If you do you will see my seemed to be different that the other quoted sources in the same story. I guess it was dumb luck but mine were on target for the year.

I also worked closely with Major oil companies, and with the same understanding of the fundamental tired to explain a major move in crude was going to occur starting DEC 98'. Then a couple of years ago I explain that it was my opinion that crude had topped out, and at that time it was trading 145/147.. someone asked how far it would break, and I offered 25/30... you can look at a chart and see what happened after that comment. March 09' I offered my opinion crude had bottomed, and even mentioned a stock trade. Not long after that I closed the positions with a substantial profit.

Looking back I had to realize my effort to help was a big waste of time. I should have in retrospect done as my friend DJ said walk on by... mostly because people do not have the ability to recognize facts from fiction. Politicians count on it...

So, I realize a lot of my effort could be misunderstood, but I think my comment about Matt is that if I was his boss I would fire him for playing on the Internet during working hours, then I realized I would have never hired him in the first place. I always kept the numbers in my office small... I preferred quality over quantity.