LCTA's Trader:
LCTA's president and sole trader has more than 25 years of experience in the livestock industry is rather unique. Upon graduation from the University of Illinois with a BA in Economics in 1982, he was accepted into a management training program with Swift Independent Meat Packer, at the time the largest of its kind in the world. His training was comprehensive; it was the first time in the firm's history they recruited business graduates for the purpose of teaching them the agricultural side of the business. The intensive 18-month program took place at Swift's Marshalltown, IA plant, training him in every facet of operation, each for a period of two weeks, from buying hogs to boning hams.

After completing the requisites of the program, he was promoted and transferred to corporate headquarters in Chicago where he served as product manager in charge of pricing all the company’s major cuts of meat. It was at this time that Swift, with him at the helm, created the firm’s first cross-basis hedging program. Responsibilities focused on the refrigeration of literally millions of pounds of pork product prior to hedging inventory in the futures markets by employing historical pricing and industry wide statistics. His intended goal: to profit when pork-cut pricing got out of line with the futures markets. The program proved highly successful during his two-year tenure and is now common practice in the meat industry. In 1985, he left Swift and took a trading position with a large global exporter of meat products.

LCTA Competitive Edge:
For the past 20 years this trader has traded primarily in cash hogs through his company which, on average, sells roughly three million pounds per month of fresh and frozen pork. Over that period, he has developed an extensive pipeline of extremely knowledgeable contacts culled from the cash livestock markets including major packers, processors and large hedge accounts.

Accordingly, it is stated in their disclosure document:

Livestock believes being well connected in the cash side and on top of the fundamentals in the livestock markets gives them a distinctive edge in trading livestock futures markets. The fundamentals effecting livestock accounts for roughly 75% of Livestock’s trading decisions.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. There is a risk of loss no matter who is managing your account.

Returns:

Money Under Management as of February 29, 2008: $455,000

Drawdown Report:

Please note that client accounts were traded more aggressively than the CTA intends to trade moving forward. The advisor will use less leverage when trading accounts as a CTA, which will reduce the number of contracts a customer will receive. Consequently, this will result in lower returns and drawdowns.

LCTA with their intimate knowledge of cash hog prices and cash market connections can potentially offer a distinct advantage in identifying both buying and selling trading opportunities due to changing fundamental factors influencing hog prices!