BASIC & RECENT MARKET INFO

Tomorrow begins the third year of the Russian/Ukraine war and Russia is gaining momentum.   When the Japanese attacked the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the US not only lost half its navy, but it was woefully unprepared for a war whereas the Japanese military had been expanding its empire throughout China and Southeast Asia since 1931. It took the USA 3 years and 8 months to destroy the Japanese Empire despite placing a priority on the defeat of Nazi Germany ahead

Highlights China returns to work today after their 15-day Lunar New Year Celebration. Reuters News Service reports there are signs that the China gloom and doom may be lifting, even if only temporarily. Equities have rebounded this year from five-year lows, and official figures on Sunday showed that tourism revenues in the Lunar New Year holidays were 47.3% more than last year and 7.7% more than pre-COVID levels of 2019.   The data will offer relief to financial policy makers

Highlights Yesterday morning, old crop corn and beans did  make new lows for 2024, extending the down trend since the spring 21 months ago. New crop corn (Dec) and beans (Nov) did not  make new lows.   March corn and March soybeans made key reversals yesterday, which is a respected technical trend indicator. A key reversal occurs when a commodity (or stock) makes a new low, but the settlement price is higher than the previous day’s high. Before you mortgage your house and buy

Highlights Early this morning, a land-based cruise missile launched from Houthi-controlled Yemen struck a commercial tanker vessel 60 nautical miles north of Bab al-Mandab Strait (Red Sea/Suez Canal area) causing a fire and damage but no casualties.   Yesterday’s mid-day weather model runs took quite a bit of the rain for Northern and Central Brazil out of the first and, to a lesser extent, the second week of the forecast and moved the rain to the third week out.     Yesterda

Upcoming S&D The USDA will issue its December S&D today at 10 AM Mountain Time. There will be no adjustment to US production (SOP for Dec S&D), but there may be adjustments to the demand side on the domestic S&D. The world S&D may have production and demand adjustments. Market-wise, this will be non-event, but if there is a surprise, it will be friendly for higher prices. Highlights CONAB lowered Brazil’s soybean production estimate from 162.42 mil mts to 160.18 (USDA 163).

USDA is now accepting applications for farm loans online: https://www.fsa.usda.gov/news-room/news-releases/2023/usda-now-accepting-applications-for-farm-loans-online Highlights Corn in Brazil is worth more to feeders and ethanol plants than it is worth at the ports. That should mean the end of Brazil’s corn exports for this marketing year. Brazil's southern state of Parana had the wettest Oct-Nov in a quarter century, almost 21 inches of rain (534 mm, ~70% above avg). Yester

Highlights Cash wheat export traders are saying China has probably bought more milling quality wheat this year than ever before. Their wheat crop problem was too much rain at harvest. The past few days, traders say China bought about 2 million mt of milling wheat from Australia and the same tonnage from France or the EU which probably put China wheat purchases at record large. Dr. Cordonnier reduced his corn and soybean production estimates for Brazil by 2 million mts each.

Highlights By a vote of 220 to 209, the House of Representatives elected a Speaker in the person of Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson, whose pedigree looks like Jim Jordan without as many political battle scars. He is against financial aid to Ukraine, abortion, gay marriage, wants to close the borders, forebid gender-related surgery and hormone treatment, prohibits mask mandates on airplanes, and tighten immigration standards. He probably was able to get enough votes because

Highlights A sea of red (lower prices) across world stock markets and another surge in U.S. Treasury yields on Wednesday ensured a bearish open in Asia today. So far this marketing year, US ethanol production is above last year and the five year average while ethanol inventory is below last year and the five year average. Yesterday morning, the USDA announced the sale of 132,000 mts of old crop soybeans to China. Jim Jordan received two less votes for Speaker yesterday tha

Tidbits Mark has a friend near Oto in Woodbury County, Iowa who has cut two fields of beans. The first was 15 bu/ac, the second field 35 bu/ac. The war continues to escalate. Fertilizer Between January and July 2023, the United States increased purchases of fertilizers from Russia to a record US$944 million according to RIA Novosti using US Statistical Service numbers. Russia became #2 fertilizer supplier to the United States. The value of Russian fertilizer imports to the U

Highlights Informa’s updated US yield numbers have corn at 177.5 vs. 175.1 in August with production at 15.395 billion vs. 15.111 in August. Soybean yields at 51.0 vs. 50.9 in August and production at 4.214 billion vs. 4.205 in August. Cash export traders in Brazil received some questions from the Chinese about soybean export capacity for the November-January window. China is concerned the low water in the US river system and the Panama Canal will restrict US exports of corn

One week from today will be the USDA’s September Crop Production and S&D Reports. All eyes will be on the US corn and beans yields as...

Labor Day is Monday. Markets will reopen Monday evening normal time. Carry is the return to storage. When the market sees plenty of carryover, it builds carry into the market by selling the nearby contracts and/or buying the deferred contracts. When the nearby contracts gain on the deferred contracts, the market is removing carry from the market because it does not want as much of the crop stored. If the commodity has negative carry (an inverted market), the market is scream

Comments on China Economy & AG China has a problem that makes its current debt problem a comparative simple issue. Here is the explanation as Roger sees it. For thousands of years, the Chinese retirement plan was for parents to have 8 to 12 children and hope half of them survive to adulthood so they can take care of mom and dad in their old age. China’s one-child policy became the law of the land 1980 as a measure to put a brake on China's population growth and to facilit

Highlights The Pro Farmer Crop Tour begins today and the war continues to escalate. China was expected to cut interest rates 10 and 15 basis points on the one year and five year Loan Prime Rate (LPR) this morning. Many analysts predicted a big reduction to the mortgage reference rate to revive credit demand and shore up the ailing property sector. China only cut the one-year loan prime rate (LPR) by 10 basis points to 3.45% from 3.55% previously, while the five-year LPR was

Economy and Market Comment First thing this morning, there was a large “dump” of economic data that the world marketplace expected to be gloom and doom for the world’s second largest economy and world’s largest importer of food and energy. Markets around the world were on edge all day Monday and down-right scared Monday evening. The economic data was a little worse than expected for the most part, but not so bad. What shocked the market was the People's Bank of China lowere

A person is “long” a market if he makes money when the price moves higher. Likewise, if a person is “short” the market, he makes money if the price goes down. If you have unpriced corn in the bin, you are long corn in the cash market. If you have corn in the field that is not priced, you are also long the cash corn market. A person who buys corn futures is long corn in the futures market. If you have a sold corn futures position, you are short the corn futures market. If y

Highlights Weekly export sales reported Thursday morning were a net reduction of 315,600 mts of old crop corn. It has been more than 20 years since weekly corn sales were a net reduction in May. The market knew China had cancelled about 570,000 mt of corn purchases two weeks ago, but the expectation was other buyers would offset the cancellations to get at least a net positive sale for the reporting week ending a week ago Thursday. None-the-less, corn futures were smartly hig

Highlights Russia said the sanctions the West has levied against them are “a barrier” to Russia’s continuation of the grain corridor for Ukraine exports. The current deal ends March 19th. Russia, the world’s largest wheat exporter, raised their wheat export tax 3.5% (~US 8¢ per bushel or $2.90 per mt) effective for February 15-21st. Ukraine’s marketing year-to-date corn, wheat and barley exports are down 28.7% from a year ago. While that is no surprise, it is a lot of grain

Tidbits The real (ree-al) is the currency of Brazil. As its exchange rate strengthens in the world markets, it makes Brazilian exports more expensive, just like every country with a strong currency. And, just like every other country with their currency increasing in value, the market value of their exports must be reduced to be competitive in the world marketplace. Brazil's corn and soybean prices are declining as the exchange rate of the real rises. Farmers are not sellin