BASIC & RECENT MARKET INFO

Highlights The Swiss National Bank is financially backing the sale of troubled Credit Suisse to UBS, the two largest banks in Switzerland. The banks agreed on a price per share Sunday afternoon and Credit Suisse stated on their website the deal has been made. The Banks of Canada, England, Japan, EU, Federal Reserve, and the Swiss National Bank announced late last evening a coordinated action to enhance liquidity of the U.S. Dollar for international trade and confidence. Asi

Highlights Oleksandr Kubrakov is Vice Prime Minister for the Restoration of Ukraine. He reported yesterday The Black Sea Grain Initiative (Ukraine’s corridor to export grain) has been extended for 120 days. Elena Faige Neroba is with Maxi Grain in Kyiv, Ukraine. She said Russia notified Turkey and the UN that the grain deal was extended for 60 days. UBS AG is the largest Swiss bank. It has asked the Swiss government to cover about $6 billion in costs if it were to buy 167-ye

Highlights Late yesterday, the Manhattan District Attorney asked for a meeting with law enforcement officials ahead of a possible indictment of Donald Trump. The DA said he is planning to have Donald Trump handcuffed and arrested next week over hush money Trump’s attorney paid to Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet in 2016. What this event would do to commodity prices is probably bearish short term and then bullish after a week or so. Hopefully, the nation does not have to go th

Tidbits USDA announced yesterday morning the sale of 641,000 mts of old crop corn to China. The three-day old crop corn sales to China total is 1.92 million mts (75.6 million bushels). The corn basis is firming at the river and Great Lake terminals and the May futures corn contract has gained 7¢ on July corn this week and 17¢ since last fall. May will gain another 10 to 20¢ by mid-Arpil now that corn exports are moving. Last year, May corn went 44¢ over July. So many farmer

Tidbits All markets rotated 180° yesterday from expectations of a stronger dollar and higher interest rates to a return to an easy money policy. The pivot of market expectations in such a few days has never happened before. It is truly a historic event. Your great-grandchildren will be reading about the events of this past weekend when they are working on their MBA or Ph.D. in macroeconomics. On Thursday, the market had priced-in an 81% probability the Fed would raise intere

Economy Last summer, we explained how the Federal Reserve’s management of the US economy had returned to the confusing policy of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s when good economic news was bad for commodity prices and bad economic news was bullish for commodity prices. How can that happen? Paper currency is no longer tied to something of value such as gold, silver, or in the old days, salt. People with paper currency used to be able to go to a bank and redeem the paper for

Tidbits Many times this winter we have commented about how good news for the US economy was bad news for grain and oilseed prices because the Fed is trying to choke a stronger economy with tighter credit. On Thursday and Friday, the yield (interest rate) on two-year maturity US Treasury notes declined over 50 basis points (one-half percent). That is the sharpest decline since the world’s fourth largest investment firm, Lehman Brothers, went belly-up in September 2008 during

Friday morning We received more good economic news for the US economy at 7:30 Central this morning. The US economy added 311,000 jobs in February and the market expected only 205,000 jobs. The market knows a better economy means the Federal Reserve thinks that means more inflation, so the Fed will increase interest rates faster and higher than expected before the report was released. In order to choke the economy to slow inflation; higher interest rates and a good economy m

Highlights The Chinese spy balloon drifting across North America was shot down near the South Carolina Coast by the U.S. military around 2:40 PM Eastern on Saturday. U.S. Navy ships were deployed and preparing for the recovery operation. Military analysts think the balloon was remotely controlled to some extent as it crossed the USA at 60,000 feet. The balloon was over Alaska for a week before heading southeast. The Dept of Defense (DOD) confirmed late Friday a second Chines

Highlights The Dollar Index made a ten-month low Thursday and then rallied sharply Friday after the January jobs report stated the US added 517,000 jobs. The market expected only 185,000 new jobs. For any economy to add three times more jobs than expected in one month is blockbuster good news. Demand for goods and services will explode! But, not in the USA... The current managers of the United States monetary policy manage the economy by adding money to the money supply to s

Highlights The World Bank expects global economic growth to be 1.7% in 2023 and 2.7% in 2024 with the Russian economy to contract by 3.3% in 2023 and expand 1.6% in 2024. Goldman Sachs, on the other hand, said the US economy may avoid a recession entirely. They are a lone wolf among Wall Street firms and economic think tanks. For those of you who have been with us for a while, know we have been saying the same thing for several months. Goldman goes so far to say the EU may al

About 2023 new crop Justin asked: "What’s your 2023 new crop recommendations? Will u be putting those out soon? Or do u wait until old crop recs have been filled? I’m fairly new to your program so just asking. Thanks." We will begin tracking new crop beans and corn outlook after the January 12th S&D with the final 2022 production estimates. We do not want anyone pricing new crops until they know their cost of inputs. Inflation of farm supplies and machinery in the 1970’s res

Highlights The commodity market news since Friday's strong finish and now includes a major escalation of the war in Eastern Europe (bullish), China is replacing Turkey as Putin's #1 buddy (bullish because Turkey keeps Ukraine's grain corridor open), less rain than expected in Argentina (bullish), continued poor US corn and wheat exports, (yes, bearish but very old news), the US money supply declined from the previous month for the first time in 33 years (hey, that puts a real

Highlights Officials in Beijing increased public covid checks and locked-down some residential apartment complexes after the covid case load increased fourfold in recent days. The word “lockdown” scared the crude oil bulls yesterday, but crude held in there with a nice comeback of $1.56 to settle down only 67 cents. We highly recommend no long crude oil or petroleum product positions because of China’s battle with covid. Starting Jan 5th, the US will require negative covid te

Highlights The oil tanker traffic jam at the Black Sea entrance to the Dardanelles Strait and access to the rest of the world started to clear yesterday after insurers and the Turkish government reached an agreement over the regulation requiring proof-of-insurance documents. The International Group of P&I Clubs and Turkey officials came to an agreement (pay-off). US crude oil inventories increased 7.819 million barrels last week after declining four consecutive weeks. The mar

Highlights China announced that mandatory COVID testing is no longer required. People are allowed to move around their cities more freely than they have been in three 3 years. More restrictions are expected to be removed or watered-down on Thursday. In a back-handed cowardly move, the EU and the US agreed yesterday morning (but did not announce until 1:06 PM Central time) to a 45-day transition period when they can still legally purchase Russian crude, provided it is delivere

Highlights All the crude oil traders saw or heard yesterday was more cases of covid infection in China than any time since the dark days...

Highlights A third railroad union, the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, has voted to reject the tentative agreement with the National Carriers’ Conference Committee. If the railroads go down with the barges down... possible Black Swan event. Will Biden let the railroad unions strike? President Truman did not and he was a Democrat also. Reuters reports that 800,000 people were placed on covid lockdown in Wuhan, China and new daily cases yesterday were in excess of 1,000 acro

Highlights "Roger, some yield info for you. These numbers should cover a large area of at least southern and eastern Nebr., yields west are worse yet. I’ll just give you our data as I know its accurate. Dryland beans mostly 25-30, a couple fields touched 40 that were planted into wheat stubble. I have heard of a lot of beans in the teens, we no-till so that helps our yields. Irrigated beans 65-72, should be 72-85+. Dryland corn, first field- 78. Last year just across the ro

Highlights After Friday and Monday, the commodity markets should be about out of sellers for a while. The news cannot get worse. Well, actually it could, but it would be difficult to get a worse attitude about the price outlook. Yesterday’s market action was all gloom and doom because the market is expecting the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates 75 to 100 basis points (¾ to 1%) each of the next three months to retard economic growth and England, the financial center