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Show Are commodities in your future? commodity market lose money," said Andrews. "Williams, because of his carefully researched techniques, tech-niques, is one of the 10 percent who actually make money, consistently." Williams' technique, simply sim-ply put, is to take the money and run. Unlike stocks where holding on to elements of a portfolio for long-term gains may seem important, in commodities you could be in and out of the market several times a week. "I believe in capturing the profit for the clients," said Williams, "and returning it to them, allowing them to stay in commodities with their original investment and having new monies to reinvest rein-vest elsewhere." Where Williams stands out from the crowd is in predicting trends. And as a show of his personal belief in being rewarded for achievements, achieve-ments, his fee is based only on a percentage of the profits a client makes. He cites a gold account he has managed for the past few years for a group of investors ii.i Mimii mi in.nmii i ii i in ir including entertainer Kenny Rogers. "Gold runs on a 13-day chartable cycle," said Williams. Wil-liams. "By learning to chart when that 13-day high and low point will most likely be, this account saw an 86 percent profit last year, and 102 percent profit the year before." Both Andrews and Williams Wil-liams are quick to add that investing in commodities should only be done with a person's top five percent of discretionary income. It takes units of $30,000 to $40,000 to begin an account. "Currently we are managing manag-ing some $4' 2 million in commodities," said Andrews. "And while most of those dollars represent individuals, some are groups of people who have pooled their monies to get into the market." Among their investors is a pair of "little old ladies from Pittsburgh." "We have explained ex-plained to them the risk of this money being wiped out in a matter of hours," said Andrews. "But they love the excitement." And why not? In the past year, Andrews says, "the little old ladies' have seen an 80 percent return on their money. "They have done exceptionally excep-tionally well and, I confess, we probably trade their account a little more conservatively con-servatively than the rest." At last Friday's seminar Williams was willing to toss out a few predictions. "Silver will be stronger, but we're not going to see those days of where silver and gold were rising to $45 and $900 an ounce again soon. Howard Ruff is dead wrong ... "There will be a rally in mid-March and it will be a great time to buy . . . "Interest rates will decline later this year . . . "By June, pork bellies will be down." For those who have "disposable "dis-posable income" they wish to invest, Andrews and Williams Wil-liams work with the Chicago offices of Clayton and Company Com-pany to place all theii buy sell orders. by Teri Gomes Larry Williams is a soft-spoken, soft-spoken, no-nonsense, fiscally-astute best-selling novelist from Kalispell, Montana. He is also one of the nation's most successful commodity traders. If youi1 knowledge of commodities com-modities consists of Barbara Streisand's lucky buy on pork bellies in the movie, "For Pete's Sake," or more recently the collapse of the orange juice market in the film "Trading Places," you may have a distorted sense of how commodities work, but you probably have a good idea of the potential for excitement surrounding them. Williams, who is in partnership part-nership with Park City resident Dick Andrews, spoke last Friday to a select group of Park City and Summit County businessmen who have an interest in futures. Author of a number of financial bibles including, "The Secret of Selecting Stocks" and the 1982 bestseller, best-seller, "How to Prosper in the Coming Good Years," Williams is considered by many to be a guru in the commodities business. His track record on speculating on pork bellies, or gold, or cocoa beans is impressive. Last year the portfolios he manages boasted a 342 percent return on their investments. Unlike the stock market, in which Williams began trading trad-ing early in the sixties, the commodities have more pre dictable relationships, he says. "The supply and demand theory is very real in commodities. If Hershey needs cocoa beans for increased in-creased production, they will buy in huge quantities and change the market in a matter of hours. And in the case of, say, hogs, we know how long it takes for hogs to breed. But no one yet has quite been able to predict how long it takes to breed an Apple computer." In its simplest form, buying commodities means buying a contract to purchase something in the future, say, 4,000 pounds of pork bellies. If that contract is dated to mature in December, you hope (with educated guesses, of course) that price of bellies will increase between now and December and that almost al-most as soon as it does you sell your contracts. Of course, a virus could affect the market by infecting large numbers of pigs and you could be wiped out by next Friday. Commodities are far more immediate than stocks. And economic and agricultural changes can affect these markets in a matter of hours, Williams says. Observing and speculating on the relatively few commodity com-modity markets (only about 25-30 futures compared to the nearly 3,500 stocks offered) is not for the investor looking for a place to put his $10,000 life savings. "Ninety percent of the people who are in the |
