BASIC & RECENT MARKET INFO

Highlights ProFarmer Tour 2024 results for Illinois were up 5.4% year-on-year, topping the old tour high of 196.96 from 2014. USDA sees it up 9%. Pod counts for soybeans were the tour's highest since 2000 and up nearly 12% the previous year. USDA has up 5%.  Three districts of Iowa show mostly strong potential in western Iowa. But NW corn yields were the tour's lowest since at least 2016, too much early rain. Arlen Suderman, Chief Commodities Economist for StoneX, commented:

Highlights DTN lead analyst, Todd Hultman, said on August 12 during a webinar about S&D report: “Speculators in the corn market have been encouraged  to hold onto their short positions by the Federal Reserve Board, which is trying to keep prices in check by increasing interest rates… You would think we’re getting down to the lows here somewhere, but technically of course we’re not seeing any signs of that just yet.” Here is Sean Pratt’s summary  for the webinar.   The Consume

Highlights Farmers and agronomists are sounding the alarm that Tar Spot is becoming quite a problem once again in the far Eastern Corn Belt. We recommend you check your fields as many folks have been very surprised by the intensity of the Tar Spot disease in their corn fields treated a month ago.   The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) raised its USA forecast for crude oil demand, although its price outlook for this year and next has been revised down.   The EIA no

Highlights The Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell, said the Fed may be ready to reduce interest in September as recent data added to their confidence that inflation is coming into line with their 2% target. Stock indexes screamed higher on that expectation and the dollar was sharply weaker. The tough-talking face of the HAMAS’ international diplomacy crew, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed Wednesday morning in Iran. He had a major hand in building up Hamas' fighting capacity an

Tidbits The S&P 500 and NASDAQ Indexes were down on Wednesday and had its worst day since late 2022 due to a selloff in high-flying technology stocks. The S&P slid 2.3%, with Tesla shares plunging 12% in the biggest drop since September 2020. The Nasdaq 100 was about 3.7% lower due to Google’s YouTube advertising revenue weakness.   Eduardo Vanin wrote on Wednesday: "Soybean premiums (basis)  FOB Paranaguá and CFR China surged 30 to 40 cents per bushel in just a few days. Far

Highlights Eric Snodgrass: "We use that term derecho when we’re talking about a storm system that produces damaging winds over at least a 400-mile swath. That’s certainly what we got out of this as it went through it produced over 850 reports of severe wind damage, including some tornadoes, along with those really strong winds."   Snodgrass says the system, which hit some areas recently impacted by the remnants of Hurricane Beryl, also caused widespread flooding issues.    "I

Marketing Service & Tools Many (most) agricultural marketing services provide information, but make no pricing recommendations. The eight of us at Wright on the Market do the research to provide you seven days a week the facts a person needs to make informed marketing decisions.   We also provide education on marketing tools and marketing history; for 44 years Roger has been a grain marketing consultant and he has done his best in recent years to share that experience with th

The CBOT will start trading at 8:30 AM Central Time Friday.  Highlights Soybean oil leaped higher yesterday, with August up 1.6¢ per pound. Over the past 6 trading days, bean oil has added 76¢ of value to a bushel of soybeans (6.6¢ gain in value per pound of oil times 11.5 pounds of oil per bushel of soybeans). Tomorrow, we will get vegetable oil analyst Khawaja Haroon’s insights on the vegetable oil market.   The S&P 500 and NASDAQ were sharply higher and made new all-time h

Highlights Yesterday was a painful day for those of us expecting this oversold corn market to recover a bit before tomorrow’s USDA Actual Planted Acres, Quarterly Grain Stocks, and Wheat Production Reports.   Computer programs that track carryover numbers and price history say the corn market is trading a 2.7 billion bushels new crop carryover. The USDA projected carryover is at 2.102 billion bushels.       The USDA used a corn yield of 181 on the last two S&Ds. The best aver

Highlights July CBOT options expire today. A week from today is the Actual Planted Acres, Wheat Production, and Quarterly Grain Inventory as of June 1st. These numbers make the last business day in June the most important report day of the year.  Friday is not only option expiration in the grains but also for stock & index options, index & single stock futures. This could be the largest ever with over $5.1 trillion in option exposure expiring and over $870 billion of that in

Highlights Yesterday morning, the consumer price index for May was unchanged from April and up 3.3% for the past 12 months. Core CPI was up 0.2% in May (+0.1% expected), which was lowest since April 2021. April’s core CPI was +0.3%.   The Federal Reserve announced yesterday afternoon it will hold interest rates steady and pushed out the start of rate cuts to as late as December, projecting only one 25 basis points (one-fourth percent) rate reduction for the year.   China’s ec

Highlights The weekly ethanol report numbers were supportive for corn prices, but the market ignored it. Ethanol production was the second highest ever for this reporting week and the ethanol inventory was down 155,000 barrels from last week.   S&P Global left their Brazilian corn production unchanged at 123 mil. mts (USDA 122) and their soybean number also unchanged at 152 mil. mts (USDA 154).   SovEcon (Andrey Sizov) cut his Russian wheat crop estimate from 82.1 mil. mts ju

Highlights The USA GDP for the first quarter was reported at 1.3% versus 1.2% estimate. Jobless claims were 219,000 to 218,000 expected with the previous week revised up to 216,000. Goods trade balance was deficit $99.4 billion vs. $91.8 billion estimate. Goods and services combined balance is a bit better, but consistently negative since the 90s, meaning US imports more than it exports, and that is one of the reasons the national debt is ever rising. A Federal Reserve “chit-

Highlights June CBOT options expire tomorrow. Yesterday, China soybean futures traded at highs for the year at the equivalent of $15.27 per bushel. The chatter yesterday was that as many as 8 shiploads of US soybeans were booked to be shipped out of the PNW ports to China.     Yes, we really think beans will get to $13+. Corn in China is in a nice uptrend, there is some reason for optimism:

Highlights Slovakia is a member of the EU and NATO. Its Prime Minister, Robert Fico, was shot yesterday morning US time by a 71-year-old man. Fico was in critical condition when he arrived at the hospital. He did survive the surgery and was listed in stable condition at last report.   Fico has been an out-spoken critic of admitting Ukraine to membership in the EU, NATO, and military aid to Ukraine. He also opposed liberal immigration policies. He is considered a “nationalist”

Highlights Biden said late yesterday he will withhold weapons from Israel if it invades Rafah. Most news reports state Israel’s military went into Rafah on Tuesday.    The main crude oil news yesterday was the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported in the morning an inventory draw-down of 1.4 million barrels for the week ending May 3rd, which was much different than last week’s build of 7.3 million barrels. On Tuesday, the American Petroleum Institute estimated

Highlights The Fed left rates unchanged at 5.5%. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said an interest rate hike was "unlikely" and that his baseline scenario is still for inflation to cool and pave the way for lower interest rates. There will be some “quantitative easing” starting in June, meaning some movement to increase the money supply. As we expected, the Fed will not make a serious effort to get inflation lower in the Presidential election year.         The USDA crush report for Ma

Highlights Analysts expect a military operation by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) will likely maintain upward pressure on the crude oil market and natural gas to a lesser extent. The peak of hostilities will occur at the beginning of the driving season for Europe and the USA.   Israel announced it will launch an operation in Rafah, a city near the border with Egypt and the last refuge of Hamas among thousands of Palestinian refugees. The attack will begin before May 5th. The

Highlights The dollar index traded to 106.57 on Tuesday. Last Friday, the dollar index was at 104.30. In the world of exchange rates and commodity prices, that 2.27 point move in two days is a minor earthquake and it did damage to your operation.   The first week of January, the dollar index was 101.38 and it took 4.85 Brazilian Real to buy a US dollar. If soybeans were $11 a bushel, a Brazilian farmer would be paid 53.35 Reals per bushel. On April 9th, the same $11 beans wou

Market Comment The USDA will issue its April S&D today at 10 AM Mountain time. Given the March inventory of corn, we already know feed use this past winter was stronger than USDA expected. We already know from weekly numbers that the corn for ethanol crush and corn exports are running stronger than USDA projected for the year. But will USDA reduce the corn carryover below 2 billion bushels, as they should, based on the numbers we already know? Probably not.   The average esti