Editors' Notebook

Analyst Additions

Greg D Horstmeier
By  Greg D Horstmeier , DTN Editor-in-Chief
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We welcome both a familiar face in a new role and a new face to our analyst corner. (DTN photos by Nick Scalise)

There's an old saying that the cobbler's children had no shoes. So it goes for the editor's charges: Their exploits often get left out of the steady workload of news coverage.

Allow me to cobble together a fix for that by announcing some recent critical changes on the market analysis side of the DTN/The Progressive Farmer newsroom.

First, we're excited to announce that a familiar face, former Grain Analyst Todd Hultman, steps up to become Lead Analyst for DTN/The Progressive Farmer. Hultman takes charge of DTN's overall market view and leads the DTN Six Factors Strategies, as well as heading up a team of five full-time analysts plus our broad group of consulting analysts and market advisors.

Hultman came to our team in 2013 as Grain Analyst, though his familiarity with DTN and our market information and outlook goes back much further. As a young broker in the mid-1980s and 1990s, Hultman relied on DTN's news and market quotes to guide clients. In 1997, he left the brokerage business to spend more time researching the futures markets and educating others. That move led to the creation of an online educational resource for futures traders, and eventually he brought that desire to educate and serve farmers and commodity traders to DTN.

His view of the marketplace melded quickly with our DTN Six Factors Strategies and our overall effort to cut through the "noise" of the day-trading world to key in on the major market trends critical to the decisions our farmers and other customers must make. While his focus is obviously on world market actions, Hultman also is a student of the human side of those markets. He's widely read on how social function and human psychology drive decision making. He knows technical charts can point a clear path, but on the farm it's a human, filled with biases and anxieties, who has to pull the trigger on a sale or a hedging strategy.

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You can get a taste for that mix of the human and the binary in his aptly named "Todd's Take" column, which appears Friday mornings on our websites and satellite platforms. Online and mobile customers can also see his daily commentary on our DTN Closing Market Video, posted each afternoon following market closes.

You can also meet and hear from Hultman during the 2018 DTN Ag Summit, in Chicago Dec. 3-5. He will deliver the DTN market outlook Wednesday morning, and will be part of a grain marketing session during our breakout tracks. DTN customers can also meet and talk strategy with Todd on Sunday, Dec. 2, during our new VIP session that will feature a number of DTN experts and a panel of "power users" of DTN platforms.

See the full agenda at DTNAgSummit.com. Note that we've extended the Early Bird registration savings period to Nov. 28!

New to the DTN/The Progressive Farmer analysis team is Senior Analyst Dana Mantini, who has some 40 years' experience in commodity trading and analysis. Mantini was most recently a market analyst and advisor for a major global grain purchasing company, where he headed up the creation of regular daily analysis commentary aimed at the farmers, grain traders and overseas customers.

His experience as a grain originator, trader and hedger for several large agricultural firms gives Mantini broad knowledge of grain marketing techniques from classic hedging and options strategies to using various cash grain contract tools along with farm programs to manage risk.

Mantini has been a frequent speaker and presenter and has led numerous seminars on grain marketing strategies, focused on helping farmers develop deeper understanding of how futures and options, various contracts and seasonality can augment their bottom line. We're excited to welcome Mantini aboard; customers are already seeing his analysis on our subscription platforms and will be hearing more from him in the future.

DTN's origins were based on delivering timely, independent market information and analysis. Our team of full-time and consulting analysts continue to deliver that valuable insight every market day.

Greg D. Horstmeier can be reached at greg.horstmeier@dtn.com

Follow him on Twitter @greghorstmeier

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