@sdelsad/commodity-desk-daily 1.0.7 → 1.0.8

package/covered.md

@@ -2,5 +2,5 @@
 
 Running log. Read before writing a new episode: avoid repeating material, and only make callbacks to episodes listed here.
 
-- **Ep 1** (Mon) — *What a Commodity Merchant Actually Does*: What a merchant does: three transformations (space/time/form); risk absorber with a balance sheet; ABCD + COFCO + Viterra/Bunge; physical vs paper, paper is the hedge not the bet; flat price killed by hedge, profit lives in differentials; asset-heavy = options + information machines; 1851 Louis-Dreyfus Alsace-Basel origin story. Vocab: flat price, basis, book, the screen, origination, execution, ABCD. Example: 66,000 t Santos->Qingdao cargo, +80 in / +175 out, freight 70, costs 10 = 15c/bu ~ $5.50/t ~ $360k, direction-neutral.
+- **Ep 1** (Mon) — *The Units and the Language of the Desk*: Units and desk-language primer: bushel as volume (60 lb beans/wheat, 56 lb corn), 36.7/39.4 bu per tonne, cents/bu quoting, 5,000-bu lot, tick = 1/4 cent = $12.50 and 1 cent = $50/lot, month codes F-Z ('the Z'), prompt vs deferred, metric vs short ton, cwt, softs points, verbs (bid, offer, work, lifted, hit, done, washed out), differential quoting 'November plus 80', urgency priced in the plus (prompt +92 vs Oct +85), why only the local part is negotiated. Three dialogues: order fill, lifted-vs-hit, Santos beans quote. Example: 50 lots Dec corn = 250k bu ~6,800 t = $2,500 per cent, and Chicago wheat 640c x 0.367 = $235/t vs Russian $223/t FOB. Pulse: Monday pre-WASDE, name-it level (Wednesday WASDE, corn yield ~182 bpa expected, 2nd-largest crop). Friday close: KC wheat 7.14 +14c and SRW 6.40 on Black Sea tension, corn 4.39/4.62, beans 11.60, China daily-sales bookings, arabica 3.15 with stocks at 2.5y lows, sugar 16.5c, Russian wheat ~$223/t FOB.
 - **Ep 2** (Tue) — *Flat Price vs Basis*: Flat price vs basis: cash = futures + basis; quoting 'November plus 80'; desk kills flat price via hedge; long the basis (physical + short futures) vs short the basis (sold unowned + long futures placeholder, crusher example); basis moved by freight, quality, congestion, urgency, farmer selling; basis risk as the chosen, analyzable risk. Vocab: flat price, cash price, differential, plus eighty, hedged position, long/short the basis, basis risk. Example: 66,000 t Santos cargo at Nov +80 — board - hedged to zero (~.4M each way) vs +10c basis = ~40k kept.

package/ep01.md

@@ -0,0 +1,144 @@
+# Commodity Desk Daily — Episode 1: The Units and the Language of the Desk
+
+*Monday, August 10, 2026 · ~10 min listen*
+
+## Key takeaways
+
+- **The bushel is a volume measure, not a weight** — a legacy of the English grain trade, where grain was poured before it was weighed. For trading it is standardized by crop: **60 lb for soybeans and wheat, 56 lb for corn**. Hence the two conversion factors to memorize: **36.7 bu/tonne** (wheat, beans) and **39.4 bu/tonne** (corn).
+- Chicago quotes grain in **cents per bushel** ("four thirty-nine" = $4.39/bu). The contract — the **lot** — is **5,000 bushels** (~136 t of wheat/beans, ~127 t of corn). "Bought fifty" = fifty lots = 250,000 bu ≈ 6,800 t of wheat: a small ocean cargo in one sentence.
+- **Know what a move is worth before you trade**: the tick in Chicago grains is ¼¢/bu = **$12.50 per lot**; a full cent = **$50 per lot**. On 50 lots, every cent is $2,500.
+- Futures trade a **named delivery month**, each with a letter: F=Jan, H=Mar, K=May, N=Jul, U=Sep, X=Nov, Z=Dec ("the Z" = December). The nearby month is the **front / prompt**; further out is **deferred**.
+- The **verbs carry information**: you *bid* to buy, *offer* to sell, *work* a resting order. If your offer is taken you were **lifted**; if your bid is taken you were **hit**. *Done* seals the trade. *Washed out* = two offsetting trades cancel, only the difference changes hands.
+- Only the US talks in bushels. The rest of the world trades **dollars per metric tonne** (2,204.6 lb). Beware the **short ton** (2,000 lb — soybean meal trades in it): a 10% trap in any freight calculation.
+- The conversion bridge: **¢/bu × 0.367 = $/t** (wheat, beans), **× 0.394** (corn). Worked live: Chicago wheat at 640¢ ≈ **$235/t** — against Russian milling wheat offered near **$223/t FOB** the Black Sea. One unit, one world market, and you can watch them compete.
+- Oddities: US rice (and cattle) quote in **$/cwt** (hundredweight = 100 lb). Softs (coffee, sugar, cotton) quote in **cents per pound** and count moves in **points** = 1/100 of a cent — "coffee up 300 points" is 3¢/lb.
+- **A physical quote is a differential**: "November plus 80" = 80¢/bu over November futures. The futures leg is the world price both sides can hedge in one click — so the only number negotiated out loud is *the plus*, the local part: this port, this month, this quality, these ships. Urgency is priced there too ("prompt is plus 92"). Where that leads a desk is the next episode's subject.
+
+## Vocabulary
+
+| Term | Desk meaning |
+|---|---|
+| Bushel | Volume measure standardized into weight: 60 lb (soybeans, wheat), 56 lb (corn) |
+| Cents per bushel | Chicago grain quoting unit — $4.39/bu is spoken "four thirty-nine" |
+| Lot / contract | One futures contract; 5,000 bu for Chicago grains |
+| Tick | Smallest price increment — ¼¢/bu in Chicago grains = $12.50/lot |
+| Point (softs) | 1/100 of a cent per pound; "up 300 points" = +3¢/lb |
+| Month codes | F, G, H, J, K, M, N, Q, U, V, X, Z = Jan…Dec; "the Z" = December |
+| Front / prompt | The nearby month or shipment window; **deferred** = further out |
+| Metric tonne vs short ton | 2,204.6 lb vs 2,000 lb — soybean meal trades in short tons |
+| Cwt | Hundredweight, 100 lb — quoting unit for US rice and cattle |
+| Conversion factors | 36.7 bu/t (wheat, beans), 39.4 bu/t (corn); ¢/bu × 0.367 (or 0.394) = $/t |
+| Bid / offer | The price a buyer will pay / a seller will accept |
+| Work an order | Leave an order resting at your price |
+| Lifted / hit | Your offer was taken / your bid was taken |
+| Done | The word that seals a trade |
+| Washed out | Offsetting trades cancel each other; only the difference is settled |
+| Flat price | The full outright price level |
+| Differential ("plus 80") | Premium or discount to a named futures month — the negotiated part of a physical quote |
+
+## Market pulse (Monday morning, Aug 10 — week of the August WASDE)
+
+Wheat starts the week with a bid: KC September HRW closed Friday around **$7.14/bu (+14¢)**, Chicago SRW near **$6.40**, lifted by Black Sea tension. Corn is marking time — Sep ~$4.39, Dec ~$4.62 — ahead of **Wednesday's August WASDE**, the USDA's monthly supply-and-demand update and the first of the season built on farmer surveys; analysts expect a corn yield near **182 bpa**, which would make the second-largest US corn crop ever. Soybeans drift near **$11.60** with China booking US beans and corn in the daily sales flashes. Softs: arabica ~**$3.15/lb** with certified stocks at 2½-year lows; raw sugar ~**16.5¢/lb**. Russian milling wheat is offered near **$223/t FOB** — an anchor the episode converts against.
+
+---
+
+## QUIZ
+
+### Block A — Today (Ep 1: units and the language of the desk)
+
+**A1 — Translate the order, then size it.** A desk head says: "Buy me forty Dec corn, and work a bid, don't pay the offer." (a) Translate: what exactly is being bought — in lots, bushels and metric tonnes — and what does "work a bid" mean versus paying the offer? (b) Corn then rallies 7¢/bu. What is that worth on the position? (c) The same morning, Russian wheat offers fall $3/t. Which move is bigger in $/t terms — corn's +7¢/bu or Russian wheat's −$3/t?
+
+**A2 — One market, two units.** Chicago SRW wheat trades at 655¢/bu; Russian milling wheat is offered at $228/t FOB Novorossiysk. (a) Put the Chicago price in $/t. (b) A colleague concludes: "US wheat is only $12 over Russian — we're nearly competitive." Give two reasons (from this episode's own warnings) why that comparison, as stated, is not yet a trade — what has the unit conversion *not* equalized?
+
+**A3 — Decode the squawk.** A broker relays: "For your October boat he offers November plus eighty-five; prompt he'd do plus ninety-four. Your plus eighty bid — you're not getting lifted at that. November's at eleven sixty." (a) In plain numbers: what full price per bushel is the October offer, and the prompt offer? (b) Why is prompt dearer, and what does that premium price? (c) The broker said "you're not getting lifted at that" — is "lifted" used correctly here, strictly speaking? What *should* happen to a bid for it to trade, and why do the verbs matter?
+
+*(No J-1 / J-3 blocks: this is Episode 1.)*
+
+---
+
+ 
+
+ 
+
+ 
+
+## ▼ SOLUTIONS (spoilers) ▼
+
+**S-A1.** (a) Forty lots × 5,000 bu = **200,000 bu** of December-delivery corn futures. In tonnes: 200,000 ÷ 39.4 ≈ **5,080 t** (corn is 56 lb/bu — using the wheat factor 36.7 here is the classic day-one error). "Work a bid" = leave a resting buy order at your price and wait to be *hit*, rather than paying the seller's offer immediately — you risk missing the market to save the spread. (b) A cent is $50/lot, so 7¢ × 40 lots = 7 × $2,000 = **+$14,000**. (c) Corn +7¢/bu × 0.394 ≈ **+$2.76/t** — smaller than wheat's **$3/t** move. Per-tonne is the honest comparison unit; a "big" move in ¢/bu can be the smaller move once converted.
+
+**S-A2.** (a) 655¢ × 0.367 ≈ **$240/t**. (b) The conversion equalized the *unit*, nothing else. First: **location and freight** — $240 is a Gulf/Chicago-linked price, $228 is FOB Novorossiysk; the two part-cargoes land at an importer's berth with different freight, so the delivered comparison can invert. Second: **the wheats are not the same wheat** — different quality/protein and origin; "wheat" is a family of distinct markets (SRW vs 12.5% milling), and a buyer's tender specifies which one it will accept. (Both points get full episodes.) The conversion makes the two screens *comparable*, not *interchangeable*.
+
+**S-A3.** (a) October offer: 11.60 + 0.85 = **$12.45/bu**. Prompt: 11.60 + 0.94 = **$12.54/bu**. (Both float with November futures — only the plus is firm.) (b) Prompt shipment is dearer by 9¢: the premium prices **urgency** — vessels, port slots and sellers able to perform *now* are scarcer than ones performing in October. Urgency lives in the differential, not the flat price. (c) Strictly, no — an *offer* is lifted; a *bid* is **hit**. For the plus-80 bid to trade, a seller must come down and hit it. Desks do sometimes say "lifted" loosely, but the strict verbs carry real information: "I was hit" tells the room the aggressor was a seller — who initiated tells you which way the market is leaning, which is exactly why the vocabulary exists.
+
+---
+
+## The episode, in writing
+
+### "Fifty lots of Dec corn, at the market"
+
+On a trading floor, that sentence is a complete instruction. To everyone else it is three riddles: fifty of *what*, which *December*, and the market for what? This opening episode is a phrasebook, not a lecture: the units, the conventions, and the verbs that make a working desk intelligible. By the end, that order reads as a plain sentence — and you'll know what it weighs.
+
+### The bushel: a basket, standardized
+
+The bushel is the strangest unit in finance because it is a **volume** — a round basket of about 35 litres — inherited from the English grain trade, where grain was poured and measured long before it was weighed. America kept the word and then nailed it down: for trading purposes, a bushel of soybeans or wheat is defined as **60 pounds**; corn is **56**.
+
+Same word, different weights — so the tonne conversion differs by crop:
+
+| Crop | lb/bu | bu per metric tonne |
+|---|---|---|
+| Wheat, soybeans | 60 | **36.7** |
+| Corn | 56 | **39.4** |
+
+### Lots, ticks, and what a cent is worth
+
+Chicago quotes grain in **cents per bushel** — corn at $4.39 is spoken "four thirty-nine"; the desk never says dollars. Nobody trades one bushel: the contract, the **lot**, is **5,000 bushels** (~136 t of wheat or beans, ~127 t of corn). "Bought fifty" means fifty lots — 250,000 bu, roughly 6,800 t of wheat. A small ocean cargo, transacted in one sentence.
+
+The **tick** — the smallest step a price can move — is ¼¢/bu in Chicago grains, worth **$12.50 per lot**; a full cent is **$50 per lot**. So the fifty-lot order carries $2,500 of P&L per cent of movement. Units are not trivia; they are how you know what you are risking before you open your mouth.
+
+### Months have letters
+
+Futures trade a commodity *for a named delivery month*: H March, K May, N July, U September, Z December — plus F January and X November in the oilseeds. Out loud a desk mostly says "Dec" and "July"; the letters live in tickers and position sheets, but "the Z" means December. The nearby month is the **front**, or **prompt**; everything beyond is **deferred** — and the front and the deferred often tell two different stories about the same crop, which is where this week is heading.
+
+### The order, executed
+
+> **TRADER:** Where's Dec corn?
+> **BROKER:** Four thirty-nine and a quarter, at four thirty-nine and a half.
+> **TRADER:** Buy me fifty at the half.
+> **BROKER:** Done. You're filled — fifty Dec at four thirty-nine and a half.
+
+The broker quoted two numbers: the **bid** (what buyers will pay) and the **offer** (what sellers want), a quarter cent apart. The trader paid the offer. A quarter-million bushels changed hands, and both sides knew the size of the risk before anyone said yes.
+
+The verbs carry as much as the numbers. You **bid** to buy, **offer** to sell, **work** an order by leaving it resting at your price. When a trade prints, the grammar tells you who moved: an offer that gets taken was **lifted**; a bid that gets taken was **hit**; **done** seals either. In a quiet market, "you're lifted" — the buyer came to *you*, at *your* price — is information, not politeness. One more for the collection: **washed out**, when two offsetting trades cancel and only the difference changes hands. It gets a full episode later in the series.
+
+### Leaving Chicago: dollars per tonne
+
+Only America talks in bushels. The rest of the world trades grain in **dollars per metric tonne** (2,204.6 lb) — Russian wheat, Ukrainian corn, Brazilian beans, all quoted FOB a named port. Mind the trap inside the word "ton": the American **short ton** is 2,000 lb even, about 10% lighter, and one major contract — soybean meal — actually trades in it. Mixing the two in a freight calculation is a real-money error.
+
+The conversion bridge runs through the bushel weights:
+
+> **$/t ≈ ¢/bu × 0.367** (wheat, soybeans)  **·**  **× 0.394** (corn)
+
+Worked live: Chicago wheat at 640¢ × 0.367 ≈ **$235/t**. Against Russian milling wheat offered near **$223/t FOB** the Black Sea, the American screen and the Russian cash market are suddenly speaking the same language — and you can watch them compete for the same customers. That is what conversions are for: not arithmetic, comparison. One world market, visible in one unit.
+
+Two oddities to file: US **rice** (and cattle) quote in dollars per **hundredweight** (cwt = 100 lb); and the **softs** — coffee, sugar, cotton — quote in cents per pound with moves counted in **points**, each 1/100 of a cent. "Coffee rallied 300 points" is three cents a pound. Sounds enormous; isn't.
+
+### The grammar of a physical quote
+
+The most important layer comes last. On the screen, corn has one visible price. Physical traders talk differently:
+
+> **BUYER:** Santos, October shipment. What are beans?
+> **SELLER:** I can offer November plus eighty.
+> **BUYER:** Plus eighty. And if I need it prompt?
+> **SELLER:** Prompt is plus ninety-two. Ships want paying.
+
+Nobody said a price. "**November plus 80**" means 80¢/bu over the November Chicago contract — wherever futures go, the offer floats with them. The negotiated number is only *the plus*: the **differential**.
+
+Why does an entire market talk this way? Because of what each number carries. The futures leg is the *world* price — weather, crop sizes, funds, war — and both sides can hedge it on the screen in one second, so neither needs to argue about it. What no click can hedge is the *local* part: this port, this month, this quality, these ships. That is the part worth negotiating, so it is the only part said out loud. Note what the seller revealed on the way past: prompt costs twelve cents more — **urgency has a price, and it is quoted in the plus**.
+
+Read the convention and it tells you where the risk sits: the world price lives on the screen, rented out to anyone; the local price is the physical trader's actual market. What a desk *does* with that split is the next episode's entire subject.
+
+### Expect a foreign-language week
+
+If half of these words still feel foreign, that is normal — for about a week. Every term from this episode sits in the glossary below the notes, and the glossary grows with the show. Use it like a phrasebook.
+
+*Next — Episode 2: Flat price vs basis. The number on the screen is not the price of your cargo, and the gap between the two is where a physical desk actually lives.*

package/ep01.script.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
+Fifty lots of Dec corn, at the market. On a trading floor, that sentence is a complete instruction. ||| 0.5
+To everyone else, it is three riddles. Fifty of what? Which December? And the market for what? ||| 0.5
+This is Commodity Desk Daily, episode one. Today: the units, and the language of the desk. Not a lecture — a phrasebook. ||| 0.5
+By the end, that order will read like a plain sentence. And you will know exactly what it weighs. ||| 0.7
+First, the market pulse. ||| 0.4
+Wheat goes into the week with a bid. Kansas City hard red winter closed Friday around seven fourteen a bushel, up fourteen cents on the day, with Chicago soft red near six forty. Black Sea tension did the lifting. ||| 0.5
+Note the unit that just went by — cents per bushel. Hold that thought. It is today's whole subject. ||| 0.5
+Corn is waiting. September sits near four thirty nine, December near four sixty two. The reason for the wait comes Wednesday: the U S D A publishes its August WASDE report, the monthly supply and demand update, and the first of the season built on actual farmer surveys. Analysts expect a corn yield near one eighty two bushels an acre — if that prints, it is the second largest corn crop ever. ||| 0.6
+Soybeans drift near eleven sixty. The demand side is doing its part: China has been booking U S beans and corn in the daily sales flashes. ||| 0.5
+In the softs, arabica coffee trades around three dollars fifteen a pound, with exchange stocks at two and a half year lows. Raw sugar sits near sixteen and a half cents a pound. ||| 0.5
+A bushel. An acre. A pound. If your head is spinning, good. Let's fix that now. ||| 0.8
+Start with the strangest one. The bushel. ||| 0.4
+A bushel is a volume measure, not a weight. Picture a round basket, about thirty five liters. ||| 0.4
+It comes from the English grain trade, where grain was poured and measured before it was weighed. America kept the word, then nailed it down: for trading, a bushel of soybeans or wheat is defined as sixty pounds. Corn, fifty six. ||| 0.5
+Same word, different weights. So the conversion to tonnes differs by crop. Remember two numbers: thirty six point seven bushels of wheat or beans make one metric tonne. For corn, thirty nine point four. ||| 0.6
+Chicago quotes grain in cents per bushel. Corn at four thirty nine is four dollars and thirty nine cents a bushel — but the desk never says dollars. It says four thirty nine. ||| 0.5
+And nobody trades one bushel. The Chicago contract is five thousand bushels. That is the lot. When someone says they bought fifty, they mean fifty lots — two hundred and fifty thousand bushels. Call it sixty eight hundred tonnes of wheat. A small ocean cargo, bought in one sentence. ||| 0.6
+Two more words and that sentence is fully armed. The tick is the smallest step a price can move — in Chicago grains, a quarter of a cent per bushel. On one lot of five thousand bushels, that quarter cent is twelve dollars fifty. A full cent is fifty dollars a lot. ||| 0.5
+So on fifty lots, every cent of movement is twenty five hundred dollars. Units are not trivia. They are how you know what you are risking before you open your mouth. ||| 0.7
+One more piece: the month. Futures do not trade corn. They trade corn for delivery in a named month — and every month has a letter. ||| 0.4
+H is March. K is May. N is July. U is September. Z is December. Add F for January and X for November in the oilseeds. ||| 0.5
+Out loud, a desk mostly says Dec and July. The letters live in tickers and position sheets. But when someone says the Z, they mean December. ||| 0.5
+The nearby month is the front, the prompt. Anything further out is deferred. Sounds like admin — it is not. The front and the deferred often tell two different stories about the same crop, and later this week you will see why. ||| 0.7
+Put it together, and here is a real order, start to finish. ||| 0.5
+TRADER: Where's Dec corn? ||| 0.25
+BROKER: Four thirty nine and a quarter, at four thirty nine and a half. ||| 0.25
+TRADER: Buy me fifty at the half. ||| 0.25
+BROKER: Done. You're filled — fifty Dec at four thirty nine and a half. ||| 0.6
+Decode it. The broker quoted two numbers: the bid, what buyers will pay, and the offer, what sellers want — a quarter cent apart. The trader paid the offer. Fifty lots, a quarter million bushels of December corn, and both sides knew the size of the risk before anyone said yes. ||| 0.7
+The verbs matter as much as the numbers. You bid to buy. You offer to sell. You work an order — leave it resting at your price, and wait. ||| 0.5
+And when a trade prints, the language tells you who moved. If your offer gets taken, you were lifted. If your bid gets taken, you were hit. Done seals any of it. ||| 0.5
+Listen for the difference. ||| 0.4
+TRADER: Offer ten September wheat at six forty. Work it. ||| 0.25
+BROKER: Working ten at six forty. ||| 0.5
+BROKER: You're lifted on ten. ||| 0.25
+TRADER: Done. Anything behind it? ||| 0.25
+BROKER: Buyer's still there. He'd pay the same for ten more. ||| 0.6
+One word — lifted — told the trader the buyer came to him, at his price. In a quiet market, that is information, not grammar. ||| 0.6
+One last verb for the collection: washed out. Two offsetting trades cancel each other, and only the price difference changes hands. File it — it gets a full episode when we reach contracts. ||| 0.7
+Now leave Chicago. Here is the catch: only America talks like this. The rest of the world trades grain in dollars per metric tonne. Russian wheat, Ukrainian corn, Brazilian beans on the cash market — dollars per tonne, F O B a named port. ||| 0.6
+And mind the word tonne. A metric tonne is twenty two hundred and four pounds. America also runs a short ton — two thousand pounds even — and one major contract, soybean meal, actually trades in short tons. They sit ten percent apart. Mix them up in a freight calculation and the error is real money. ||| 0.6
+So a trader converts all day long, and the bridge is those bushel weights. For wheat and beans, multiply cents per bushel by point three six seven to get dollars per tonne. For corn, point three nine four. ||| 0.5
+Try it. Chicago wheat at six forty — six hundred and forty cents — times point three six seven. About two hundred and thirty five dollars a tonne. ||| 0.5
+Why bother? Because Russian milling wheat is currently offered near two twenty three a tonne, F O B the Black Sea. Two thirty five against two twenty three. Suddenly the American screen and the Russian cash market are speaking the same language, and you can watch them compete for the same customers. ||| 0.6
+That is what conversions are for. Not arithmetic for its own sake — comparison. One world market, finally visible in one unit. ||| 0.7
+Two oddities to file away. American rice is quoted in dollars per hundredweight — spoken C W T — one hundred pounds. Cattle too. ||| 0.5
+And the softs — coffee, sugar, cotton — trade in cents per pound, with their small moves counted in points: one point is one hundredth of a cent. When a broker says coffee rallied three hundred points, that is three cents a pound. Sounds enormous. Isn't. ||| 0.7
+Now the last layer, and the most important one: the grammar of a physical quote. ||| 0.5
+On the screen, corn has one visible price. But listen to two physical traders on a cargo of soybeans out of Santos, Brazil. ||| 0.4
+BUYER: Santos, October shipment. What are beans? ||| 0.25
+SELLER: I can offer November plus eighty. ||| 0.25
+BUYER: Plus eighty. And if I need it prompt? ||| 0.25
+SELLER: Prompt is plus ninety two. Ships want paying. ||| 0.6
+Nobody said a price. November plus eighty means eighty cents a bushel over the November Chicago contract — wherever November futures go, the offer floats with them. The only number being negotiated is the plus. The differential. ||| 0.6
+Why would a market talk this way? Think about what each number carries. The futures leg is the world price — weather, crop sizes, funds, war. Both sides can hedge it on the screen in one second, so neither side needs to argue about it. ||| 0.5
+What they cannot hedge with a click is the local part. This port, this month, this quality, these ships. That is the part worth negotiating — so that is the only part they say out loud. ||| 0.5
+And notice what the seller just told you: prompt costs twelve cents more than October. Urgency has a price, and it is quoted in the plus. ||| 0.5
+Read the convention and it tells you where the risk sits. The world price lives on the screen, rented out to anyone who wants it. The local price is the physical trader's actual market. What a desk does with that split — that is the next episode's entire subject. ||| 0.8
+What to keep. ||| 0.4
+A bushel is volume standardized into weight: sixty pounds for beans and wheat, fifty six for corn — hence thirty six point seven and thirty nine point four bushels to the tonne. ||| 0.5
+A Chicago lot is five thousand bushels, and a cent is fifty dollars a lot. Know your size before you know your opinion. ||| 0.5
+America quotes cents per bushel. The world quotes dollars per tonne. The desk lives in the conversion. ||| 0.5
+And a physical quote is a differential against a named month. The plus is the market. ||| 0.6
+If half of these words still feel foreign, that is normal — for about a week. Every term from today sits in the written notes, in a glossary that grows with the show. Use it like a phrasebook. ||| 0.6
+Next time: flat price versus basis. The number on the screen is not the price of your cargo — and the gap between the two is where a physical desk actually lives. ||| 0.5
+There is a quiz in the show notes — three questions, with worked solutions. Try them before you peek. See you on the desk. ||| 0.8

package/feed.xml

@@ -5,9 +5,9 @@
     <link>https://www.npmjs.com/package/@sdelsad/commodity-desk-daily</link>
     <description>A daily 10-minute briefing on physical commodity trading — grains, oilseeds, softs, freight, basis, and the craft of the merchant. Built for the trading floor. New episode every weekday.</description>
     <language>en-us</language>
-    <itunes:author>Commodity Desk Daily</itunes:author>
+    <itunes:author>Sébastien Delsad</itunes:author>
     <itunes:owner>
-      <itunes:name>Seb</itunes:name>
+      <itunes:name>Sébastien Delsad</itunes:name>
       <itunes:email>seb.ge.ed@gmail.com</itunes:email>
     </itunes:owner>
     <itunes:explicit>false</itunes:explicit>
@@ -18,6 +18,14 @@
       <title>Commodity Desk Daily</title>
       <link>https://www.npmjs.com/package/@sdelsad/commodity-desk-daily</link>
     </image>
+    <item>
+      <title>Ep 1 — The Units and the Language of the Desk</title>
+      <description>The bushel, the lot, the tick, dollars per tonne and the month letters — the phrasebook that makes a trading floor intelligible. Plus the grammar of a physical quote: why the only number negotiated out loud is the plus.</description>
+      <enclosure url="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@sdelsad/commodity-desk-daily@1.0.8/ep01.mp3" length="7897581" type="audio/mpeg"/>
+      <guid>https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@sdelsad/commodity-desk-daily@1.0.8/ep01.mp3</guid>
+      <pubDate>Mon, 10 Aug 2026 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
+      <itunes:duration>658</itunes:duration>
+    </item>
     <item>
       <title>Ep 2 — Flat Price vs Basis</title>
       <description>Why a physical desk kills the flat price within minutes, and what remains: the basis. A Santos cargo where a one-dollar board move nets to zero and a quiet ten-cent differential move is the entire profit.</description>
@@ -26,13 +34,5 @@
       <pubDate>Tue, 11 Aug 2026 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
       <itunes:duration>553</itunes:duration>
     </item>
-    <item>
-      <title>Ep 1 — What a Commodity Merchant Actually Does</title>
-      <description>Merchants are not paid to predict prices. Space, time and form — the three transformations — and one Santos-to-Qingdao cargo that makes $360k with no opinion on price direction.</description>
-      <enclosure url="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@sdelsad/commodity-desk-daily@1.0.6/ep01.mp3" length="7520877" type="audio/mpeg"/>
-      <guid>https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@sdelsad/commodity-desk-daily@1.0.6/ep01.mp3</guid>
-      <pubDate>Mon, 10 Aug 2026 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
-      <itunes:duration>626</itunes:duration>
-    </item>
   </channel>
 </rss>

package/glossary.md

@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+# Commodity Desk Daily — glossary
+
+Units, conventions and desk expressions, accumulated as the show introduces them.
+
+- **bid** — the price a buyer will pay  _(ep 1)_
+- **bushel** — volume measure standardized into weight, 60 lb for soybeans and wheat, 56 lb for corn  _(ep 1)_
+- **cents per bushel** — Chicago grain quoting unit, 4.39 dollars per bushel is spoken four thirty-nine  _(ep 1)_
+- **conversion factors** — 36.7 bushels per tonne for wheat and beans and 39.4 for corn, so cents per bushel times 0.367 or 0.394 gives dollars per tonne  _(ep 1)_
+- **cwt** — hundredweight, 100 lb, the quoting unit for US rice and cattle  _(ep 1)_
+- **deferred** — months or shipment windows further out  _(ep 1)_
+- **differential** — the premium or discount to a named futures month, as in November plus 80, the negotiated part of a physical quote  _(ep 1)_
+- **done** — the word that seals a trade  _(ep 1)_
+- **flat price** — the full outright price level  _(ep 1)_
+- **hit** — your bid was taken by a seller  _(ep 1)_
+- **lifted** — your offer was taken by a buyer  _(ep 1)_
+- **lot** — one futures contract, 5,000 bushels for Chicago grains, the unit desks count positions in  _(ep 1)_
+- **metric tonne** — 2,204.6 lb, the grain trading weight unit outside the US  _(ep 1)_
+- **month codes** — F G H J K M N Q U V X Z for January through December, the Z is December  _(ep 1)_
+- **offer** — the price a seller will accept  _(ep 1)_
+- **point (softs)** — one hundredth of a cent per pound, so up 300 points means up 3 cents  _(ep 1)_
+- **prompt** — the nearby month or shipment window, ready to move now  _(ep 1)_
+- **short ton** — 2,000 lb, used by US soybean meal, about 10 percent lighter than a metric tonne  _(ep 1)_
+- **tick** — smallest price increment, a quarter cent per bushel in Chicago grains, worth 12.50 dollars per lot  _(ep 1)_
+- **washed out** — offsetting trades cancel each other and only the price difference is settled  _(ep 1)_
+- **work an order** — leave an order resting at your price and wait  _(ep 1)_

package/package.json

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 {
   "name": "@sdelsad/commodity-desk-daily",
-  "version": "1.0.7",
-  "description": "Commodity Desk Daily - Ep 2: Flat Price vs Basis",
+  "version": "1.0.8",
+  "description": "Commodity Desk Daily - Ep 1: The Units and the Language of the Desk",
   "license": "CC-BY-4.0",
   "keywords": [
     "podcast",

package/ep02.md

@@ -1,126 +0,0 @@
-# Commodity Desk Daily — Episode 2: Flat Price vs Basis
-
-*Tuesday, August 11, 2026 · ~10 min listen*
-
-## Key takeaways
-
-- Every physical price is **two numbers added together**: cash = futures + basis. The futures leg is the world price — public, violent, seen by everyone at once. The basis is the **local price of reality**: freight, quality, congestion, urgency, farmer selling.
-- Physical offers are quoted as a differential — "**November plus 80**" — not as a full price. Both sides assume the futures leg because both can hedge it in one click; the only number actually negotiated is *the plus*.
-- A desk **kills the flat price within minutes** by selling futures against every physical purchase. What remains is a basis position — the risk the desk *chose* to keep.
-- **Long the basis**: own physical, hedged with short futures — you win if the differential strengthens. **Short the basis**: sold physical you don't yet own, holding long futures as a placeholder — you win if the differential weakens before you buy.
-- The worked cargo: 66,000 t of Brazilian beans (~2.4M bu) bought FOB Santos at November +80, hedged. Chicago falls $1: beans lose ~$2.4M, the short hedge makes ~$2.4M — **net zero**. The differential moves +80 → +90: 10¢ × 2.4M bu = **$240k of real, banked P&L**.
-- Basis moves on **logistics, quality and urgency** — the things elevators, vessels and relationships see before any screen does. That's where physical information gets paid (Episode 1's "information machines").
-- **Hedged does not mean safe.** The differential can move against you: 10¢ the wrong way on that cargo is a $240k loss, hedge or no hedge. That is *basis risk* — smaller than flat-price risk, local, analyzable. You don't escape risk in this business; you choose it.
-
-## Vocabulary
-
-| Term | Desk meaning |
-|---|---|
-| Flat price | The full outright price level (futures + basis together) |
-| Cash price | The price of the real, physical commodity in a real place |
-| Basis / differential | The premium or discount over a named futures month ("plus 80") |
-| "November plus 80" | Quote convention: 80¢/bu over November futures |
-| Hedged position | Physical position with the futures leg sold (or bought) against it |
-| Long the basis | Own physical + short futures: profit if the differential strengthens |
-| Short the basis | Sold physical not yet owned + long futures: profit if it weakens |
-| Basis risk | The residual risk of the differential moving against a hedged position |
-
-## Market pulse (Monday Aug 10 close — eve of WASDE)
-
-Grains are marking time ahead of **Wednesday's August WASDE**, the first with survey-based yields. The trade expects corn near **182.5 bpa** (−0.5 from July — still a ~15.95bn bu crop, second-largest ever) and soybeans near **52.9 bpa**. Monday was quiet: September beans slipped about a cent, meal eased, oil firmed; demand support came from China booking **238,000 t of US beans** and ~105,000 t of corn. Wheat is the live story: Russia's harvest is only **46% complete** — the slowest pace in five years — with Russian offers around **$223/t** and August exports running below the usual pace as Azov Sea shipping is disrupted by Ukrainian strikes; Matif firmed. Weather: rain reached the northern Corn Belt, the south stayed hot and dry, and France's maize crop is rated its **worst since 1980**.
-
----
-
-## QUIZ
-
-### Block A — Today (Ep 2: flat price vs basis)
-
-**A1 — Decompose the month.** A desk buys 30,000 t of corn (≈1.18M bu) from an interior elevator at "December futures minus 10" and sells December futures against it the same hour. A month later, December corn has rallied 50¢, and the desk sells the corn to an exporter at "December minus 2". Separate the flat-price P&L from the basis P&L, in ¢/bu and in dollars. Which number was the desk's actual trade, and what was the 50¢ rally to them?
-
-**A2 — Which offer do you lift?** You buy soybeans for a crusher. Two firm offers for the same Santos October boat arrive at 9:00 with November futures at $11.80: Exporter X offers "November plus 85"; Exporter Y offers flat $12.70. By 11:00, November has dropped 25¢ and both offers are still on the table, unchanged. Which offer is cheaper at 9:00? At 11:00? Explain which seller is carrying flat-price risk while the offers sit, and what that tells you about why the physical market quotes in basis terms.
-
-**A3 — Name the position.** (a) A merchant holds 40,000 t of unsold wheat in a port silo, fully hedged with short futures. (b) A miller has sold flour forward for Q4, owns no wheat, and holds long futures as a placeholder. Freight rates out of that port suddenly spike and export premiums jump 12¢. For each player: long or short the basis? Who gained, who lost, by how much per bushel — and why does the direction of the futures market not appear anywhere in your answer?
-
-### Block B — Episode 1 (what a merchant actually does)
-
-**B1 — The recruiter's question.** "Commodity traders bet on prices going up, right?" Give the desk-level correction in three moves: what a merchant is actually paid for (name the three transformations with one concrete example each), what paper is for, and where the profit therefore lives.
-
-**B2 — Rerun the cargo.** Episode 1's cargo: buy FOB Santos at futures +80, sell delivered Qingdao at futures +175, freight 70¢, execution 10¢, 66,000 t ≈ 2.4M bu. (a) Recompute the net margin in ¢/bu and dollars. (b) During the voyage, Chicago *rallies* 90¢ instead of falling. A colleague says the desk "left $2M on the table by hedging". What did the hedge actually cost or save, and why is the colleague's framing the wrong way to run a merchant book?
-
-*(No J-3 block: three episodes back would be Episode −1.)*
-
----
-
- 
-
- 
-
- 
-
-## ▼ SOLUTIONS (spoilers) ▼
-
-**S-A1.** Basis P&L: bought at −10, sold at −2 → the differential appreciated 8¢. On ~1.18M bu that is ≈ **$94k**. Flat-price P&L: zero by construction — the 50¢ rally lifted the physical corn by 50¢ (+$590k on the cargo) and cost the short futures exactly the same (−$590k). The desk's actual trade was *the basis*: buy the differential at −10, sell it at −2. The 50¢ rally was noise passing through a hedged book — a cash-flow event on margin (Episode 3's subject), not a P&L event. The trap: crediting the rally to the trader. A desk that "made money because corn rallied" wasn't hedged — and that's a different job.
-
-**S-A2.** At 9:00, X works out to 11.80 + 0.85 = $12.65 against Y's flat $12.70 — **X is 5¢ cheaper**. At 11:00, X's offer has fallen with the board to 11.55 + 0.85 = $12.40, while Y is still $12.70 — **X is now 30¢ cheaper**. While the offers sit, Y is the one carrying flat-price risk: a flat offer is an implicit bet that the board won't fall before someone lifts it (in a falling market it becomes more and more expensive relative to replacement, and nobody lifts it; in a rallying market it gets lifted instantly — adverse selection both ways). X's exposure is only the basis component. That asymmetry is exactly why the physical market quotes "plus 85" and not $12.65: it lets an offer stay firm for hours while the world price does whatever it wants.
-
-**S-A3.** (a) Physical + short futures = **long the basis**. (b) Sold product forward, long futures placeholder, still needs to buy physical = **short the basis**. Export premiums jump 12¢: the merchant's differential appreciated → **gains 12¢/bu** on the tonnage (≈1.47M bu on 40,000 t of wheat → ≈ $176k). The miller must now pay 12¢ more over futures to get real wheat → **loses 12¢/bu** on what remains to buy. Futures never enter the answer because both players hedged the flat price away on day one — what was left in both books was pure differential, and the differential is what moved. One event, two mirror-image P&Ls: that is basis as a market of its own.
-
-**S-B1.** (1) Merchants are paid to *transform*, not predict: **space** (move Mato Grosso beans to a Shandong crusher — Santos → Qingdao), **time** (buy at harvest glut, store, sell into spring scarcity — paid via carry), **form** (crush beans into meal + oil; blend two off-spec wheats into one on-spec cargo). (2) Paper (futures/options) is the *hedge*: it cancels the price risk of physical positions rather than expressing views — the flat price is killed within minutes. (3) So profit lives in the **differentials** — the margins on each transformation, like Episode 1's 15¢/bu Santos→Qingdao cargo ≈ $360k, earned with zero opinion on direction.
-
-**S-B2.** (a) Gross 175 − 80 = 95¢; net 95 − 70 − 10 = **15¢/bu** ≈ $5.50/t ≈ **$360k** on 2.4M bu. (b) The hedge "cost" ~$2.16M on the futures leg (90¢ × 2.4M bu) — and the physical beans *gained* the same ~$2.16M. Net effect on the book: zero; the $360k came through untouched. The colleague is comparing the hedged book to a naked long — but a naked long is a flat-price bet the desk never had a mandate (or edge) to run, and the same logic in a falling market means ruin: −90¢ unhedged is −$2.16M against a 360k margin. Merchant P&L must be repeatable and direction-neutral; "what if we hadn't hedged" is a casino counterfactual, not attribution. (Attribution done properly gets its own episode.)
-
----
-
-## The episode, in writing
-
-### The number on the screen is not your price
-
-On Monday, soybeans in Chicago drifted lower — and a desk sitting on 66,000 tonnes of soybeans didn't care. Not out of recklessness: the number on the screen simply is not the price of their beans, and never was. Understanding why is the mental model at the heart of the physical trading job.
-
-Every physical price in this business is two numbers added together:
-
-> **cash = futures + basis**
-
-The futures leg is the world price. It carries the big story — crop sizes, weather, funds, war. It is violent, public, and everyone on earth sees it at the same instant. The basis is the **local price of reality**: it prices what the screen cannot see — freight, quality, port congestion, how badly a buyer needs beans in October rather than January, whether farmers are selling or sulking.
-
-### "November plus 80"
-
-Listen to how soybeans are actually offered in Santos. Nobody says "$12.60". They say **"November plus 80"** — 80 cents a bushel over the November CBOT contract. The full offer moves all day as Chicago moves; the *plus 80* barely moves at all. That differential is the **basis**.
-
-A real conversation goes: *"Where are Santos beans for October?" — "Plus eighty."* Not a full price — just the basis. Both sides assume the futures leg, because both sides can hedge it in one click. The only number actually being negotiated is the plus.
-
-### Killing the flat price
-
-Here is what a desk does with that split: it kills the futures leg, within minutes. Buy a cargo of physical beans and, before the coffee goes cold, sell futures against it. The flat-price risk is handed to the screen, where thousands of speculators are happy to hold it.
-
-What remains is the part the desk *chose* to keep — and it has a direction, like any trade:
-
-- **Long the basis** — own physical, hedged with short futures. You want plus 80 to become plus 90: a bet that real beans, in that place, at that time, get scarcer relative to paper.
-- **Short the basis** — you've sold a cargo you don't yet own and hold long futures as a placeholder. You want the differential to weaken before you buy the physical. A crusher who has sold meal forward but hasn't bought beans is short the basis every day of the week.
-
-Notice what is missing from both phrases: any opinion about whether the market goes up.
-
-### One cargo, two P&Ls
-
-Take yesterday's cargo: 66,000 t of Brazilian beans — about **2.4 million bushels** — bought FOB Santos at November +80, hedged with short November futures. Over three weeks, Chicago falls a full dollar and the Santos differential moves from +80 to +90.
-
-| Leg | Move | P&L |
-|---|---|---|
-| Physical beans | board −$1.00 | −$2.4M |
-| Short futures hedge | board −$1.00 | +$2.4M |
-| **Flat price, net** | | **$0** |
-| Basis: +80 → +90 | +10¢ × 2.4M bu | **+$240k** |
-
-A dollar of flat price came and went and the book barely noticed. A quiet ten-cent move in the differential was the entire profit — real money, banked. That is the anatomy of a physical trade.
-
-Why did the basis move? Maybe freight tightened. Maybe Chinese crushers turned urgent. Maybe Brazilian farmers stopped selling because prices in reais looked ugly. All local, all physical, all invisible on the screen — and all things that Episode 1's "information machines" (elevators, vessels, relationships) see before any index prints. Nobody has an edge on the flat price, the most public number on earth. On the basis for beans, in Santos, for October? A desk absolutely can.
-
-### Hedged does not mean safe
-
-The differential can move against you: ten cents the wrong way on that cargo is a $240k loss, hedge or no hedge. That risk has a name — **basis risk** — and it is the risk the desk keeps *on purpose*. The point of the hedge is not to remove risk; it is to swap a huge risk you cannot analyze for a small one you can. You don't escape risk in this business. You choose it.
-
-### Market pulse recap
-
-See the pulse section above: WASDE Wednesday (corn ~182.5 bpa expected, beans ~52.9), China booking US beans and corn, Russia's slowest harvest pace in five years with Azov shipping disrupted, and France's worst maize rating since 1980.
-
-*Tomorrow — Episode 3: Futures, desk edition. Not pricing theory — plumbing. Which contracts, which months, how many lots hedge a real cargo, and what a margin call does to your morning.*