BASIC & RECENT MARKET INFO

Highlights For the seventh consecutive day, the USDA announced yesterday 198,000 tons of beans were sold to the unknown. The weather still looks to be hot and dry across much of the Corn Belt through next weekend. As of this morning, we expect Tuesday’s USDA corn and bean crop conditions to lose 2 to 3% out of the top two categories, but after the weekend, we may be expecting 3 to 4 or even 5% decline. A few days after the August USDA Crop Report, FSA released its certifie

Highlights The Panama Canal expects to maintain restrictions on daily vessel transit and maximum draft for at least 10 more months due to low water levels. This situation will make the Mississippi River Inland Waterway System less competitive, but will boost demand for rail shipments from the Upper Midwest to the PNW ports. In a move to ease a bottleneck that surpassed 160 vessels earlier this month, the Canal’s authority recently opened two more passage slots per day for no

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 Yesterday’s Pro Farmer reports for Nebraska and Indiana: These much better than expected Pro Farmer yields will make it very difficult for the harvest reports to be “better than expected.” That means we can be more confident that the fall low will be made before harvest begins. So much for the 41 nations who were going to crash the dollar yesterday. The dollar index traded higher yesterday than it has since June 12th. It has gained 4% during a strong uptrend since

Written yesterday morning: "Roger, I am in one of the dry pockets of NE Iowa (about 45 minutes north of Waterloo). I have had a little over an inch of rain since the 4th of July. Yesterday, when I was taking a load of beans to Shell Rock, I saw 3 choppers taking corn. I don't ever remember seeing choppers rolling by Aug 17. I walked some fields last night and pollination was good but seed depth is lacking. Several farmers I talked to have speculated we will have lower test we

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

The Story of Two Clients Chris and Doug were email subscription clients in May 2022. Both farm in Iowa and both became full service clients of Lance’s in early August of 2022. Chris is not going to renew his subscription. He is very upset with Wright on the Market because markets have gone down and all we do is keep saying markets will go higher. Doug renewed his subscription at once upon receiving the invoice this month. What is the difference? Same emails. Same full serv

Jacob of Wahpeton, North Dakota reports: "Wheat harvest is rolling in the southeastern part of the Red River valley in North Dakota. I just wanted to give you a little update. Hearing a lot of 35 to 50 bushel yields with very low test weights. Typical for around here is 55 to 70 bushel yields with pretty good test weight. Proteins have been high though, so likely no premium for protein being that everybody's wheat got stressed this year." Jake has a very successful grain mar

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

Low volume trading in the CBOT markets makes swings more dramatic and fundamentals hard to trade. Open Interest (the number of open contracts that need to be offset at some future date) in corn futures plus options, was 1.75 million as of Tuesday. The 5-year average OI for the same period is 2.1 million contracts. OI in Chicago wheat was 401,000, which was a record low for the period, with a 5-year average at 478,000. OI in beans was 860,000 vs. 880,000 5-year average. USDA

Highlights Russian forces continue to hit port infrastructure and damaged a cargo terminal in Odessa. Over the last 10 days, 26 port facilities have been hit in Ukraine. It came to our attention yesterday midday that troubled PacWest Bank was going to be absorbed by the Banc of California. The deal was done two days before it became common knowledge. Here is the press release from the 25th which we did not see nor did anyone we know talk or write about it: "The Banc of Calif

Highlights Ukraine and the EU are considering rebuilding port facilities and fund transportation of grain to ports in Croatia and Lithuania. That will take at least US$1.5 billion and how many months or years? How long will it take a Russian drone to destroy the new construction? They need to spend $1.5 billion to end the war. But then, ending the war is not the goal. Keeping the war going is the goal so all participants in government and war insiders can earn and/or siphon-o

We have seen first-hand several soybean fields in Illinois and Indiana with yellow spots, like one would see in early September as the beans start to turn. Ron from north-central Illinois sent us this link about yellowing soybeans, which looks more serious: https://brownfieldagnews.com/news/midwest-agronomists-tracking-down-the-cause-of-yellow-soybeans/ Highlights No news about the grain corridor deal. Corn Belt weather continues with a drier outlook into next week at least.

Highlights After Wednesday’s less than expected retail inflation report for June at 0.2%, yesterday’s inflation at the wholesale level report for June was 0.1% and the resulting 12 month inflation rate was the smallest in nearly three years. It means the economy has entered a period of disinflation even with a very tight labor market. The run of softer inflation readings will bring an end the Federal Reserve tightening money supply campaign. Lower interest rates will reduce t

Market Comment & Clarification Roger apologizes for yesterday’s morning email sent discussing when to price your commodities. In no way was his intention to recommend you sell anything from a marketing standpoint. It was an effort to calm your nerves and it failed miserably. He is sorry. That email was intended to explain that pricing a commodity with your merchandiser does not need to be the end of the marketing of that commodity. In fact, pricing the commodity to your mer

Today at 11:00 Central Time, the USDA will release its June S&D report, which will most likely be a non-event. USDA seldom changes any US demand numbers on the March, June, September or December S&D because 20 days later, the Quarterly Grain Inventory report is released and that takes the guesswork out of the demand question. Speaking of which, do you remember the March soybean USDA inventory was 57 million bushels less than expected because the monthly crush and export numb

Highlights The OPEC+ meeting this Sunday was called by Saudi Arabia to chastise other members for pumping more crude oil than they agreed. Russia is at the top of the list of over-producers. In 1985, OPEC members agreed on production quotas. In early 1986, all OPEC members, except Saudi Arabia, were over-producing. In those days, Saudi Arabia was THE big hammer of crude oil production, bigger than they are now. To show the other OPEC members what real overproduction crude o

"Good afternoon Roger, You haven't said much about USA weather lately. Here in southeast Iowa it feels more like June 30th than May 30th. No humidity at all this past Memorial Day weekend which is so odd for us. It's super dry here and hasn't rained in two weeks and nothing at all on the extended forecast. Yards are even starting to go dormant and turn brown already. Never seen it so dry this time of the year. The early crops look good but a lot of population issues in corn a

Highlights Turkey’s President Erdogan has won the runoff election yesterday. His victory will make Putin happy. All the Asian markets opened higher today because of the debt ceiling deal. SUMMARY OF DEBT CEILING DEAL: Debt ceiling to be raised to cover deficit spending for 2 years Spending cuts of $50 billion, just 0.2% of GDP $10 billion removed from the recent budget increase for IRS No budget caps after 2025 No new taxes or government programs Boost in defense and VA spen

Highlights A load of USA economic news was released yesterday morning and all of it was better than expected, which means we are more likely to see higher interest rates to bring on that recession that all the government officials and ivory tower financial power houses have been predicting. The numbers: USA new unemployment jobless claims were 229,000, 6.5% less than the expected 245,000. Continuing unemployment claims were 1.794 million, 6,000 less than expected. First qu