Dustin Gabor
Founder & Head Shark
Hey there! Thanks for checking out Grain Shark. Our service delivers all the grain marketing info & advice you need, straight to your mobile phone every day! With Grain Shark you get daily text messages that include a wide range of information on grain prices, chart analysis, recommendations & targets, news, report data, and lots more. Some of our texts have link-outs to pages where you can see my latest price charts, recommendation summaries, S&D tables and hear my commentary, which is pretty convenient in your vehicle or cab, when you're busy and don't have time to read! Just tap on the link you'll see in some of the texts to get all this additional information and other content.
Here's a run down of how a Grain Shark week breaks down.
The Week Ahead
The Week Ahead report will kick-start your week with a crop by crop review of market trends, upcoming market activity, events on the horizon, and anything that might impact your market prices for the upcoming week. Listen Monday to stay up to date on the latest analysis & strategies. This is a great report to catch up on a little bit of everything. It's usually 15-20 mins long but you can also just read the info on the crops you care about, if you need to save some time.
Along with the text & audio you will see the latest futures & cash target tables, our recommendation summaries, events calendar, and a summary of what type of reports to expect from us throughout the week. This full meal deal report is sent out on most Monday's, except occasionally if we need to get some recommendations out or if there are more important / urgent things for you to know about right away.
Daily Futures Updates
Morning & Closing prices are sent every day for grains & livestock. These are optional texts that you can get. I always suggest if you are feeling like you are getting too many texts, cut the futures updates, and get the rest. But I do like the futures updates especially during busy times of the year. The text comes, you read it, and away you go.
Morning grain & livestock futures texts arrive around 9AM CT. Closing grain futures arrive around 1:50PM CT. Closing cattle futures around 1:25PM CT.
📈 If you see the uptrend emoji it means that a majority of the futures contracts are up.
📉 If you see the downtrend emoji it means that a majority of the futures contracts are down.
In The News Update
We search for keywords on all the major news publications, subscribe to many news updates, then provide you with a summary of the most relevant news that might impact your grain prices. You can quickly read the summary or click through to the whole article. The funds like to react to news & events so it's important to keep you up to date. These texts will typically come in a full report on either Tuesday or Wednesday but sometimes there will be one-off news updates, if we catch something big & important happening during the week. A couple good examples of a one-off news update would be a sudden tariff adjustment by India or a sanction against Russian wheat.
Text Consultations & Weekly Q&A Report
A big part of the service is asking us questions when you have one. The more we know, the more helpful this service will be for you. Just shoot us a text or email and get the answers you need conveniently sent back to your phone. You can ask for target suggestions. We can evaluate deals for you. Tell us a price or basis. We compare it to current & historical info then let you know if it's a good deal. We use your postal code to keep it as local to your farm as possible! Or maybe you need a little more info after a recommendation is sent out, or you heard some news and want to fact check it. There's quite a variety of things you can ask us about.
We then turn around and take the top questions and answers from the week, record them in a report, and send them back out for you to review. This report is one of our most popular for sure. It gets sent out pretty much every Thursday. And not to worry, we respect your privacy. All questions remain anonymous and if you don't want us to share the question just tell us.
Weekly Cash Trends & Futures Summaries
On Friday we crunch the numbers and send out the weekly changes for grain, oilseed, and livestock futures. This gives you a better picture of how much a market moves on a week to week basis. The summary also includes a quick recap of what happened during the week, and what's possibly setting up for the next week of trade. The weekly summary is a classic. We've be doing this update since pretty much the beginning. Folks like this update because it gives a good quick summary on the overall trend & plan for sales going forward.
The weekly cash trends for pulses & other crops gives a week to week price change & an indication of whether it's a good price to sell some, lots, or none. We mentioned those emoji's earlier that help you soak up the info with a quick glance. And, if you see a price that isn't available in your area, just shoot me a text, I will tell you where the price was quoted from, and then I'll do my best to help you find something in your area.
Other Features
Now that you have a good understanding of what I would say are the most important updates we send out, let's quickly talk about a few more things that we offer. There is a lot of additional info for you to discover when you have the time!
The Info Center - A convenient one stop shop to quickly access all of our information. You'll find the latest reports, questions & answers, recommendation summaries, sales trackers, this week's texts, events calendar, crop zones map, and more.
The Weekender - Check your in-box Saturday morning for the Grain Shark Weekender. It's an email summary of everything we published via text message and mobile pages during the week -- and some other fun stuff too!
Events Calendar - Check the calendar for important market events, report dates, and holiday closures.
S&D Data Crunching - We send out detailed summaries for all major USDA, Stats Canada, Ag Canada, and other reports.
Historical & Seasonal Analysis - We have futures, cash, basis, and S&D info tracked for historical comparisons. We update you on the seasonal trends regularly.
Education & Research - We offer special reports on a wide variety of topics. Technical & fundamental resources. Ask me anything about the markets and I'll do the research for you!
Fertilizer & Fuel - We offer insights on the inputs side of the markets as well. This isn't our main focus but it is something we strive to help you with as well.
Thanks again for trying us. Team Sharky is really looking forward to working with you! I hope you will find, like over 1000 other Canadian farmers who use Grain Shark everyday, that our service is an effective & economical way to stay on top of your marketing, quickly & easily, by just reading a few texts each day. Do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.
Dustin Gabor
Lead Analyst & Head Shark
PS - More about my background here if you're interested!