BASIC & RECENT MARKET INFO

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

Highlights China's former Deputy Public Security Minister, Sun Lijun, who had been denounced for months "seriously damaging the unity of the party", has been jailed for life. The announcement was made early today just ahead of a key Communist Party congress. What is more important and may or may not be related to the Security Minister’s problems, late this afternoon China time, all commercial flights into and out of Beijing and about 60% of China’s commercial flights have be

Highlights Yesterday morning, USDA announced the sale of 136,000 mts of 2022 crop soybeans to China. That is rather surprising given they just bought 3+ million mt of Argentine beans at prices $25 below US prices. What does China know that we don’t? For one thing, they have a good idea how many beans they are going to need between now and when the new crop Brazilian beans become available in late January. Keep in mind, Brazil harvested a 2022 bean crop that was 20 to 25 mil

Highlights Railroads reached a tentative agreement with unions, which, if approved by the union members, there will be no strike. Very good news for everyone in the grain market, indeed. The agreement provides rail employees a 24% wage increase during the five-year period between 2020 and 2024, while also paying out an immediate $11,000 per union member upon adoption. U.S. natural gas futures fell 8% on Thursday on the news of the probable settlement. Crude oil prices were s

Highlights Yesterday morning, USDA announced the sale of 196,000 mts of new crop soybeans to China. Yesterday morning the government reported the Consumer Price Index (CPI, the measure of inflation at the retail level) was 8.5%, down from June’s 9.1%. The market expected 8.7%. Crude oil recovered its losses yesterday afternoon to settle higher on the news that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) inventory had declined 5.3 million barrels last week. Gasoline stocks were do

Highlights It is bullish for the price outlook when deliveries are light or non-existent on a futures contract. The were no bean complex deliveries assigned on August futures last evening. The oldest long dates are: Meal: 23 December 2020 Oil: 29 June 2022 Beans: 24 February 2022 Bulgarian farmers are blocking roads to protest against cheap grain imports from Ukraine. All the roads the grain trucks from Ukraine travel are blocked. Imagine being a hungry person needed that che

Very few analysts dared predict the crop ratings released by USDA this afternoon, but Benson-Quinn analysts expected a slight downgrade. Corn percentage in the top two categhories was steady and beans improved 1%. The corn in Illinois and Indiana improved 3%, but Nebraska was down 3% and Iowa was down 4%. That sounds bullish for corn. The story was pretty much the same for beans. The numbers: In hind sight, today’s trading was dominated by macro-economic factors rather than

Highlights

Highlights

Highlights