@sdelsad/commodity-desk-daily 1.0.7 → 1.0.9

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*: Ep 1 rework (units primer): bushel 60/56 lb and 36.7/39.4 bu per tonne, cents/bu, 5000-bu lot (~136/127 t), metric vs short ton trap, cwt rice, ticks (quarter cent = $12.50) vs points, month codes H K N U X Z, flat price vs differential quoting (plus 70 over Z), prompt vs deferred, verbs bid/offer/work/done/lifted/hit/firm/washout, why physical quotes differentials (board = world risk, plus = local risk, offers can stay firm). 3 desk dialogues (futures order, Gulf corn physical, broker morning relay). Examples: $6.40 wheat = $235/t vs $223 Russian offer, 50-lot tick math $25k per 10c. Pulse: softs-led — ICE arabica certified stocks 2.5-yr low 244k bags vs robusta 4.5-mo high (divergence flagged for week 3), Oct raw sugar new move highs on weak Brazil CS June crush, Dec cotton highest since mid-May (hot dry Belt, soft dollar), grains quiet pre-WASDE (named only), China 238k t beans + 105k t corn
 - **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

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+# 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 basket of roughly 35 liters, inherited from the English grain trade. Weight per bushel differs by commodity: **60 lb for soybeans and wheat, 56 lb for corn**, so the tonne conversions differ too: **≈36.7 bu/t** for beans and wheat, **≈39.4 bu/t** for corn.
+- Chicago quotes grain in **cents per bushel**; one futures contract — a **lot** — is **5,000 bushels** (≈136 t of wheat/beans, ≈127 t of corn). The rest of the world trades **dollars per metric tonne**: $6.40/bu wheat ≈ **$235/t**, which is what makes a $223/t Russian offer readable at a glance.
+- Two ton traps: the **metric tonne (2,204.6 lb)** vs the US **short ton (2,000 lb)** — 10% apart. Rice quotes in **$/cwt** (hundredweight = 100 lb); coffee, sugar and cotton in **cents per pound**.
+- The **tick** is the minimum move: ¼¢/bu in Chicago grains = **$12.50 per lot**. Softs count in **points** — 1/100 of a cent. A 10¢ move on 50 lots of corn = 40 ticks = **$25,000**.
+- Physical grain almost never trades at a full price. It trades as a **differential** against a named futures month — "**plus 70 over Z**" — using one-letter **month codes** (H March, K May, N July, U September, X November, Z December). **Prompt** = nearby shipment; **deferred** = further out.
+- The verbs are precise and binding: you are **bid** or you **offer** (commitments, not moods), you **work** a resting order, an offer gets **lifted**, a bid gets **hit**, offsetting contracts get **washed out** — and "**done**" creates a contract, voice first, paperwork later.
+- Why differentials at all? Because a grain price is **two risks glued together**: the futures leg is world risk anyone can shed on the screen in one click; the plus is the local part — port, window, quality — that no screen will take off your hands. The grammar mirrors the risk, and it lets an offer stay **firm** for ten minutes while the board moves.
+
+## Vocabulary
+
+| Term | Desk meaning |
+|---|---|
+| Bushel | Volume measure (~35 L): 60 lb of soybeans/wheat, 56 lb of corn |
+| Lot | One futures contract — 5,000 bu in Chicago grains |
+| Bushels per tonne | ≈36.7 for beans/wheat, ≈39.4 for corn |
+| Metric tonne / short ton | 2,204.6 lb vs 2,000 lb — 10% apart |
+| Cwt (hundredweight) | 100 lb; the quoting unit for US rice |
+| Tick | Minimum price move: ¼¢/bu = $12.50 per lot in Chicago grains |
+| Point | 1/100 of a cent per pound — how softs desks count moves |
+| Month codes | H=Mar, K=May, N=Jul, U=Sep, X=Nov, Z=Dec — said out loud ("plus 70 Z") |
+| Flat price | The full outright price level |
+| Differential / basis | The premium or discount to a named futures month ("plus 80") |
+| Prompt / deferred | Nearby shipment vs further down the curve |
+| Bid / offer | Firm prices to buy / sell — commitments, not moods |
+| "At" | Introduces the offer side: "462 bid, at 462½" |
+| Work | Leave an order resting with a broker |
+| Done | The word that makes a trade a binding contract |
+| Lifted / hit | The buyer took the offer / the seller sold into the bid |
+| Firm | A tradable quote that binds if accepted — often with a time limit |
+| Washout | Cancelling offsetting physical contracts by settling the difference |
+| Bag (coffee) | 60 kg — how the coffee trade counts volume |
+| WASDE | USDA's monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates |
+
+## Market pulse (Monday Aug 10)
+
+Softs led. ICE **certified arabica stocks fell to 244,172 bags — a 2½-year low** — after slower Brazilian shipments following June rains; arabica jumped over 4% Friday and December held that range Monday. Robusta is the mirror image: certified stocks at a **4½-month high**. **October raw sugar printed new highs for the move** as Brazil's Center-South crushed sharply less cane in June and the new season runs behind last year. **December cotton rallied to its highest since mid-May** on a hot, dry US Cotton Belt and a softer dollar. Grains marked time ahead of **Wednesday's WASDE**; China booked 238,000 t of US soybeans and unknown buyers took 105,000 t of corn.
+
+---
+
+## QUIZ
+
+*Episode 1 — today's block only (no earlier episodes to draw on).*
+
+**Q1 — Done for fifty thousand tonnes.** December corn futures stand at $4.62½. An exporter offers Gulf corn at "plus 70 over Z" and a buyer says done for 50,000 metric tonnes. (a) Compute the full price per bushel and per metric tonne (corn ≈ 39.37 bu/t). (b) How many bushels did the buyer just commit to, and how many lots would hedge it one-to-one? (c) A colleague runs the same numbers using 36.7 bu/t "because that's the factor from the episode". What goes wrong, in bushels, lots and tonnes of exposure?
+
+**Q2 — Read the tape.** Your broker's morning, October shipment: *9:02 — "I show plus 90 offered, best bid plus 82." 9:40 — "Buyer lifted the 90 for 25,000 tonnes. Done." 11:15 — futures have fallen 15¢; the same seller re-offers October at plus 90.* (a) At 9:40, who moved — buyer or seller — and what exactly did the word "done" create? (b) At 11:15, is the new plus-90 offer cheaper, dearer, or identical compared with the 9:40 trade? Answer twice: once in flat-price language, once in differential language. (c) Why can a differential offer sit "firm for ten minutes" while a flat-price offer can't?
+
+**Q3 — The unit traps.** (a) A US seller quotes SRW wheat at "$228 per ton", meaning short tons. A buyer signs for 30,000 metric tonnes assuming metric. What price per metric tonne did the seller actually mean, and what is the total dollar gap on the contract? (b) Rough rice is quoted at $18.50/cwt. Convert to dollars per metric tonne. (c) Coffee "falls one-eighty on the day". How much is that in cents per pound, and what counting convention are you using?
+
+---
+
+ 
+
+ 
+
+ 
+
+## ▼ SOLUTIONS (spoilers) ▼
+
+**S1.** (a) Full price = 4.625 + 0.70 = **$5.325/bu**. Per tonne: 5.325 × 39.37 ≈ **$209.6/t**. (b) 50,000 t × 39.37 = **1,968,500 bu**; ÷ 5,000 = 393.7 → **≈394 lots**. (c) 36.7 bu/t is the **soybean/wheat** factor (60 lb bushels); corn bushels weigh 56 lb, so a tonne holds more of them. Using 36.7 gives 1,835,000 bu → 367 lots — an under-hedge of **~27 lots ≈ 133,500 bu ≈ 3,400 t** of corn left exposed to flat price. The trap: the bushel isn't one unit — it's one unit *per commodity*, which is exactly why the episode gave two conversion factors.
+
+**S2.** (a) The **buyer** moved: "lifted" means the buyer took the standing offer. "Done" created a **binding contract** for 25,000 t at October futures + 90¢ — voice first, confirmations later. (b) In **flat-price** terms the new offer is **15¢ cheaper**: the board fell 15¢ and the offer is board + 90, so the all-in dollar price fell with it. In **differential** terms it is **identical**: plus 90 before, plus 90 now — in the language of the desk, the seller "hasn't moved". Both statements are true at once; which one matters depends on which risk you're carrying (Episode 2 takes exactly this up). (c) A differential offer only exposes the seller to movement in the *local* component — the board leg reprices itself continuously and both sides can hedge it in one click. A flat-price offer silently bets that futures won't move while it sits: in a falling market it's instantly stale (or adversely selected in a rally). The differential convention is what lets physical offers survive minutes, not seconds, next to a live screen.
+
+**S3.** (a) A short ton is 2,000 lb = 0.90718 metric tonnes, so $228/short ton = 228 ÷ 0.90718 ≈ **$251.3/metric tonne**. Gap ≈ $23.3/t × 30,000 t ≈ **$700,000** on the contract — from one three-letter word ("ton") left unconfirmed. (b) $18.50/cwt × 22.046 cwt/t ≈ **$408/t**. (c) Softs count in **points**, 1/100 of a cent per pound: "one-eighty" = 180 points = **1.80¢/lb**. The habit to build: every quote comes with a unit convention attached, and the desk never says it out loud — you're expected to know.
+
+---
+
+## The episode, in writing
+
+### Eleven words, ten million dollars
+
+"Plus seventy over Z. Fifty thousand tonnes. Firm for ten minutes." Somewhere this morning, a sentence like that bought roughly ten million dollars of corn — and to anyone new to the business, not one of its eleven words means anything. This opening episode is the decoder: the units, the grammar of a quote, and the small set of verbs that do the industry's business. By the end, that offer reads itself.
+
+### A basket, not a weight
+
+Start with the strangest unit on the floor. The **bushel** is a *volume* measure — a basket of roughly 35 liters — inherited from the English grain trade, which measured grain by the basket long before anyone weighed it. America kept the bushel; the rest of the world moved to tonnes.
+
+Because it's a volume, its weight depends on what's in it: **60 lb** for soybeans and wheat, **56 lb** for corn. That single fact drives the two conversion factors a grain trader uses all day:
+
+| | lb/bu | bu per metric tonne | 5,000-bu lot |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| Soybeans, wheat | 60 | ≈36.7 | ≈136 t |
+| Corn | 56 | ≈39.4 | ≈127 t |
+
+Chicago quotes in **cents per bushel**, and one futures contract — one **lot** — is 5,000 bushels. So "we bought fifty lots of corn" means a quarter of a million bushels, about 6,300 tonnes: counted in lots, moved in tonnes, quoted in cents. Three languages for one pile of grain.
+
+The conversion is worth practicing once: Chicago wheat at $6.40/bu × 36.7 ≈ **$235/t**. Suddenly a Russian export offer at $223/t means something to your eye. (Different wheat, different port — comparing them *properly* is a later episode — but the numbers now live on the same axis.)
+
+Two remaining ton traps: the world's **metric tonne** is 2,204.6 lb, while US domestic markets often use the **short ton** of 2,000 lb — 10% apart, and a costly thing to leave ambiguous. Rice quotes in dollars per **hundredweight** (cwt = 100 lb); coffee, sugar and cotton in cents per pound.
+
+Finally the **tick**, the minimum price move: a quarter-cent per bushel in Chicago grains, worth **$12.50 per lot**. Softs desks count in **points** — hundredths of a cent ("coffee up one-twenty" = 1.2¢/lb). Tick math turns squawk into money: a 10¢ move against fifty lots of corn is 40 ticks × $12.50 × 50 = **$25,000**.
+
+### How a futures order sounds
+
+> **TRADER:** Where's Dec corn?
+> **BROKER:** Four sixty-two bid, at four sixty-two and a half.
+> **TRADER:** Buy me fifty at the half.
+> **BROKER:** Done. Fifty lots at four sixty-two and a half.
+
+Eight seconds of business. "Dec" is the December contract. "Bid" is where buyers are paying, and the small word "**at**" introduces the offer: $4.62 bid, offered at $4.62½. And "**done**" is not filler — done means the trade exists. On a desk, done is a contract; the paperwork comes later.
+
+### The grammar of a physical quote
+
+Physical grain — real tonnes in a real port — speaks a second dialect. It almost never trades at a full price. It trades as a *distance from the futures board*: plus eighty, minus twenty, always against a named month. That distance is the **differential**, or the **basis**.
+
+The months carry one-letter codes, said out loud: **H** March, **K** May, **N** July, **U** September, **Z** December — and **X** November, the soybean harvest month. Hence "Gulf corn plus seventy Z", "beans plus eighty X". Add two words of tense: **prompt** (shipment now or near it) and **deferred** (further down the curve). The same corn can be plus 70 prompt and plus 50 deferred — and that gap is information.
+
+> **BUYER:** Gulf corn, first half September, where are you?
+> **SELLER:** I can offer plus seventy-two over Z.
+> **BUYER:** I'm a buyer at plus sixty-eight.
+> **SELLER:** Can't get there. Plus seventy, fifty thousand tonnes, firm for ten minutes.
+> **BUYER:** Done. Seventy over Z, first half September.
+
+That seller's line is the sentence the episode opened with. Notice what never got said: a price. Both parties carry the board in their heads; the only number they argued about was the plus. And "firm for ten minutes" is an offer with a fuse — a **firm** offer is tradable, binding the moment someone says done, which is exactly why sellers put a clock on it.
+
+### The verbs
+
+There are about seven, and they are precise. You are never "interested in buying" — you are **bid**. You never "consider selling" — you **offer**. Both are commitments, not moods. To **work** an order is to leave it resting with a broker. When a buyer takes an offer, it was **lifted**; when a seller sells into a bid, it was **hit** — direction is baked into the verb. And when two offsetting physical contracts between the same parties are cancelled against each other, settled for the money difference instead of shipping grain both ways, the trade was **washed out**.
+
+> **BROKER:** Your plus eighty offer — I've got a buyer indicating seventy-five.
+> **DESK:** Work seventy-eight. Firm.
+> **BROKER:** He lifts it. Done at seventy-eight for twenty-five thousand tonnes.
+> **DESK:** Confirmed. What's on the bid side?
+> **BROKER:** Someone hit a seventy-two bid this morning. I'd call your market seventy-two, seventy-eight.
+
+Two trades, and the desk knows where its market lives: 72 bid, 78 offered. Nobody published that number — it exists only in the traffic. That is why desks pay brokers, and why the language matters.
+
+### Why a plus, and never a price
+
+The question underneath the whole episode: why does physical grain quote differentials at all? Because a grain price is really **two risks glued together — and only one of them is yours**. The futures leg is world risk: weather, funds, a WASDE print — public, violent, and sheddable on the screen in one click, so the conversation doesn't waste breath on it. The plus is the local part: this port, this shipment window, this quality — the part no screen will take off your hands, and therefore the part professionals negotiate.
+
+The grammar mirrors the risk: the board carries the world; the plus carries your problem. It's also what lets a physical offer survive — plus 70 can stay firm for ten minutes while the board moves a nickel, where a flat-price offer would be stale in seconds. The convention is what makes trading real grain next to a live screen possible at all.
+
+### Market pulse recap
+
+Softs led Monday: ICE certified arabica stocks at 244,172 bags (a 2½-year low) against robusta stocks at a 4½-month high — one market draining, the other refilling; October raw sugar at new highs for the move on Brazil's weak June crush; December cotton at its best since mid-May on a hot, dry Cotton Belt and a softer dollar. Grains waited on Wednesday's WASDE while China booked 238,000 t of beans and unknown buyers took 105,000 t of corn.
+
+*Next — Episode 2: Flat price vs basis. The screen says one number; a cargo is worth another. What a desk actually does with the plus you just learned to hear.*

package/ep01.script.txt

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+Plus seventy over Z. Fifty thousand tonnes. Firm for ten minutes. ||| 0.5
+Eleven words. Roughly ten million dollars of corn. And if you're new to this business, not one of them means anything yet. ||| 0.5
+This is Commodity Desk Daily, episode one: the units, and the language of the desk. Not a lecture — a decoder. By the end of this episode, that offer reads itself. ||| 0.7
+First, the pulse. Today's markets — quoted, deliberately, in the units you're about to learn. ||| 0.5
+The softs lead. Certified arabica coffee stocks at the exchange have fallen to two hundred forty-four thousand bags, a two and a half year low. ||| 0.3
+A bag is sixty kilos — it's how the coffee trade counts, from farm gate to warehouse. ||| 0.4
+Brazil shipped less than expected after June rains, and arabica jumped over four percent on Friday. Monday, December eased but held the range. ||| 0.5
+Robusta is the mirror image: exchange stocks at a four and a half month high. One coffee market draining, the other refilling. Hold that thought for week three. ||| 0.6
+Sugar: October raws printed new highs for this move. Brazil's Center South crushed sharply less cane in June, and the new season runs behind last year. ||| 0.5
+Cotton: December extended its rally to levels last seen in mid May. The U S cotton belt is hot and dry, and a softer dollar helps U S exports. ||| 0.5
+Grains are quieter, waiting on Wednesday's WASDE — the U S D A's monthly supply and demand report, the one release that stops every grain desk. It gets its own episode next week. ||| 0.4
+China booked two hundred thirty-eight thousand tonnes of U S soybeans, and unknown buyers took a hundred and five thousand tonnes of corn. Demand, quietly ticking over. ||| 0.7
+Now, the units. Start with the strangest one: the bushel. ||| 0.4
+A bushel is a volume measure, not a weight. A basket, roughly thirty-five liters. ||| 0.4
+The number that matters: for soybeans and wheat, a bushel weighs sixty pounds. For corn, fifty-six. ||| 0.4
+Why? The English grain trade measured grain by the basket before anyone weighed it. America kept the bushel. The rest of the world moved to tonnes. ||| 0.5
+Which means a trader converts between the two all day. The magic numbers: thirty-six point seven bushels of beans or wheat per metric tonne. Thirty-nine point four for corn. ||| 0.6
+Chicago quotes grain in cents per bushel. One futures contract — one lot — is five thousand bushels. Call it a hundred and thirty-six tonnes of wheat, or a hundred and twenty-seven of corn. ||| 0.5
+So when a desk says it bought fifty lots of corn, that's a quarter of a million bushels — about sixty-three hundred tonnes. Counted in lots, moved in tonnes, quoted in cents. Three languages for one pile of grain. ||| 0.7
+Practice the conversion once, because you will do it forever. Chicago wheat at six dollars forty a bushel. Times thirty-six point seven: about two hundred thirty-five dollars a tonne. ||| 0.4
+Now a Russian export offer at two hundred twenty-three dollars a tonne means something to your eye. Different wheat, different port — that comparison is a later episode — but the numbers now live on the same axis. ||| 0.6
+Two more ton traps. The world trades the metric tonne — two thousand two hundred four pounds. American domestic markets often use the short ton — two thousand pounds flat. Ten percent apart. Confuse them on a contract and you have given away one tonne in ten. ||| 0.6
+And rice quotes in dollars per hundredweight — cwt, a hundred pounds. Coffee, sugar and cotton: cents per pound. ||| 0.6
+Last piece of arithmetic: the tick, the minimum price move. In Chicago grains, a quarter of a cent per bushel. On a five thousand bushel lot, that's twelve dollars fifty. ||| 0.4
+Softs desks talk in points instead — one point is a hundredth of a cent. Coffee up one twenty on the day means a hundred and twenty points. One point two cents. ||| 0.5
+Do the tick math on our fifty lot corn buyer. A ten cent move is forty ticks — five hundred dollars a lot, twenty-five thousand dollars across the position. From four words on a squawk box, you now know the money. ||| 0.8
+Here's how those units sound at work. A trader and a broker, eight seconds of business. ||| 0.5
+TRADER: Where's Dec corn? ||| 0.25
+BROKER: Four sixty-two bid, at four sixty-two and a half. ||| 0.25
+TRADER: Buy me fifty at the half. ||| 0.25
+BROKER: Done. Fifty lots at four sixty-two and a half. ||| 0.5
+Unpack it. Dec is the December contract. Bid is where buyers are paying. At — that one small word introduces the offer. Four sixty-two bid, offered at four sixty-two and a half. ||| 0.4
+And done is not filler. Done means the trade exists. On a desk, done is a contract — the paperwork comes later. ||| 0.7
+That was futures. Physical grain — real tonnes in a real port — speaks a second dialect. ||| 0.4
+Physical almost never trades at a full price. It trades as a distance from the futures board: plus eighty. Minus twenty. Always against a named month. ||| 0.5
+That distance is called the differential — or the basis. Say a corn exporter offers plus seventy over December: the price is December futures, whatever it is right now, plus seventy cents. ||| 0.5
+The months carry one letter codes, and desks say them out loud. H is March. K is May. N is July. U is September. Z is December. And X is November, the soybean harvest month. So Gulf corn plus seventy Z. Beans plus eighty X. ||| 0.6
+Two more words of grammar. Prompt means nearby — shipment now, or close to it. Deferred means further down the curve. The same corn can be plus seventy prompt and plus fifty deferred, and that gap is information. ||| 0.7
+Now listen to a physical trade. A buyer and an exporter, Gulf corn. ||| 0.5
+BUYER: Gulf corn, first half September, where are you? ||| 0.25
+SELLER: I can offer plus seventy-two over Z. ||| 0.25
+BUYER: I'm a buyer at plus sixty-eight. ||| 0.25
+SELLER: Can't get there. Plus seventy, fifty thousand tonnes, firm for ten minutes. ||| 0.25
+BUYER: Done. Seventy over Z, first half September. ||| 0.6
+That seller's line is the sentence we opened the show with. Notice what never got said: a price. Both of them carry the board in their heads, and the only number they argued about was the plus. ||| 0.5
+And notice firm for ten minutes — an offer with a fuse. A firm offer is tradable: say done, and it binds. Which is exactly why sellers put a clock on it. ||| 0.7
+Third dialect: the verbs. There are about seven you need, and they are precise. ||| 0.4
+You are never "interested in buying". You are bid. You never "consider selling". You offer. Bid and offer are commitments, not moods. ||| 0.5
+To work an order is to leave it resting with a broker — working sixty-eight means your bid sits in the market while you do something else. ||| 0.4
+When a buyer takes an offer, the offer was lifted. When a seller sells into a bid, the bid was hit. Direction is baked into the verb: lifted means the buyer moved. Hit means the seller did. ||| 0.5
+And when two offsetting physical contracts between the same two parties get cancelled against each other — settled for the money difference instead of shipping grain both ways — the trade was washed out. ||| 0.7
+One more exchange. A broker giving a desk its morning picture. ||| 0.5
+BROKER: Your plus eighty offer — I've got a buyer indicating seventy-five. ||| 0.25
+DESK: Work seventy-eight. Firm. ||| 0.25
+BROKER: He lifts it. Done at seventy-eight for twenty-five thousand tonnes. ||| 0.25
+DESK: Confirmed. What's on the bid side? ||| 0.25
+BROKER: Someone hit a seventy-two bid this morning. I'd call your market seventy-two, seventy-eight. ||| 0.6
+Two trades, and the desk knows where its market lives: seventy-two bid, seventy-eight offered. Nobody published that. It lives only in the traffic — which is why desks pay brokers, and why the language matters. ||| 0.8
+Now the question underneath the whole episode. Why does physical grain quote differentials at all? Why plus seventy, instead of just saying five dollars thirty-two? ||| 0.5
+Because the price of grain is really two risks glued together — and only one of them is yours. ||| 0.4
+The futures leg is world risk: weather, funds, a WASDE print. It's public, it's violent, and anyone can shed it on the screen in one click. So the conversation doesn't waste breath on it. ||| 0.5
+The plus is the local part: this port, this shipment window, this quality. No screen will take that off your hands. So that is the part professionals negotiate. ||| 0.5
+The grammar mirrors the risk. Listen to any quote and you can hear where the risk sits: the board carries the world. The plus carries your problem. ||| 0.5
+It's also what lets a physical offer survive. Plus seventy can stay firm for ten minutes while the board moves a nickel. A flat price offer would be stale in seconds. The convention is what makes trading real grain around a live screen possible at all. ||| 0.8
+If half of today felt foreign — good. Nobody learns a language from a dictionary. You learn it by hearing it used, daily. That's what this show is. ||| 0.5
+And nothing is lost: the notes carry a full glossary — every unit, every conversion, every verb — growing with the series. When an episode outruns you, it catches you. ||| 0.7
+What to remember. A bushel is volume, not weight: sixty pounds for beans and wheat, fifty-six for corn — thirty-six point seven and thirty-nine point four to the tonne. ||| 0.5
+A quote has two parts, and only one gets negotiated. The board is the world. The plus is the local truth. ||| 0.5
+And the verbs are contracts. Bid, offer, lifted, hit — and done means done. ||| 0.7
+Next episode: what a desk actually does with that plus. Flat price versus basis — why the number on the screen is not your price, and why the gap between them is where a physical merchant lives. ||| 0.4
+The quiz for today is in the notes — three questions, all application, solutions below the fold. Same time tomorrow. ||| 0.5

package/feed.xml

@@ -5,9 +5,9 @@
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     <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>
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@@ -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 decoder episode: bushels, lots, ticks, month codes, and how ten million dollars of corn trades in eleven words. Three desk dialogues teach the grammar of a quote — and why physical grain trades as a plus, never a price.</description>
+      <enclosure url="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@sdelsad/commodity-desk-daily@1.0.9/ep01.mp3" length="8004429" type="audio/mpeg"/>
+      <guid>https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@sdelsad/commodity-desk-daily@1.0.9/ep01.mp3</guid>
+      <pubDate>Mon, 10 Aug 2026 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
+      <itunes:duration>666</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 +1,35 @@
+# Commodity Desk Daily — glossary
+
+Units, conventions and desk expressions, accumulated as the show introduces them.
+
+- **at** — the small word that introduces the offer side (462 bid, at 462 and a half)  _(ep 1)_
+- **bag (coffee)** — 60 kg, how the coffee trade counts volume  _(ep 1)_
+- **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)_
+- **bushels per tonne** — about 36.7 for soybeans and wheat, 39.4 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)_
+- **cwt (hundredweight)** — 100 lb, the quoting unit for US rice  _(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)_
+- **differential (basis)** — the premium or discount to a named futures month, quoted as plus 80 or minus 20  _(ep 1)_
+- **done** — the word that seals a trade  _(ep 1)_
+- **firm** — a tradable quote that binds if accepted, often with a time limit  _(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** — one hundredth of a cent per pound, how softs desks count moves  _(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)_
+- **WASDE** — the USDA monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report  _(ep 1)_
+- **washed out** — offsetting trades cancel each other and only the price difference is settled  _(ep 1)_
+- **washout** — cancelling two offsetting physical contracts by settling the price difference instead of shipping  _(ep 1)_
+- **work** — leave an order resting with a broker  _(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": "1.0.9",
+  "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.*