BASIC & RECENT MARKET INFO

Highlights December basis contracts and long futures positions need to be liquidated or rolled by the close of business on Wednesday, 27 November. Given that December options expire this Friday and December delivery assignments will be issued on the evening of 27th, we recommend you roll basis contracts today or tomorrow to avoid the usual weakness associated with options expiration and first notice day. There are probably a lot of December corn basis contracts. When December

Tidbits Weekly Export Inspections will be released today at 10:00 a.m. CDT. Crop Progress and Conditions will be released after the close on Tuesday.   Yesterday morning, Cargill’s crush plant at Sidney, Ohio sent a text to farmers stating they were paying $10.50 for beans in November. Their website quote at the same time was 3 under the January, at $10.30. Early this morning, their website still was 3 under the January futures.   As on Friday China announced a $1.4 trillion

Highlights Some analysts say yesterday afternoon’s weakness at the CBOT  was because polls were showing Harris was gaining on Trump. In fact, the Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll showed Harris leading Trump 47% to 44% among likely voters.   If a possible Harris victory is truly the reason CBOT prices faded yesterday afternoon, that indicates CBOT prices will rally if Trump does win. Trump won Iowa in 2020 by 8.2% and by nearly 10% in 2016.          USDA reported 91% of

Highlights All long November soybean futures and basis contracts need to be rolled or priced by the close of business tomorrow to avoid any chance of being assigned delivery. CBOT prices were lower yesterday because crude oil was down about $4 most of the day because Israel’s counter strike on Iran was not aimed at Iran’s oil infrastructure. Additional pressure came from Brazil’s rainy season progressing well and some much-needed rain is in the forecast over the next 10 days

Highlights Yesterday’s soybean export inspections were the largest weekly total in nearly two years and 69% of the beans went to China.   Cash grain export trader Eduardo Vanin reported yesterday that in the last two weeks China bought more than 90 cargoes or soybeans, 35 out of the US, 7 out of Brazil for November shipment and 46 vessels from Brazil’s new crop.   Yesterday morning, USDA reported the sale of: 169,926 mts of old crop corn to Mexico and 130,000 mts of old crop

Highlights Yesterday morning, USDA announced the sale of: 1,043,940 mts of old crop corn to Mexico 579,120 mts of new crop corn to Mexico 332,000 mts of old crop corn to unknown 175,000 mts of old crop soybeans to unknown   November soybean futures gained 5½¢ on the January beans the past 8 trading sessions. Benson Quinn Commodities, which is owned by ADM, say crushers only have enough beans to keep operating for two weeks. Farmers are not selling beans with the 90¢ drop in f

Highlights Yesterday’s U.S. commodity market was down on harvest pressure and China sent a record 125 military aircraft to encircle Taiwan “as a resolute punishment for Taiwan’s president's continuous fabrication of ‘Taiwan independence’ nonsense.”     The commodity markets fear that politicians may pull a Jimmy Carter stunt and “punish” China like Carter punished the Soviet Union for its Christmas Eve 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. On 4 January 1980, Carter banned U.S. grain

Q&A: ENSO Eugene asked: "Last Tuesday, you guys reported this ENSO chart: Your comment says that 60 days below the -0.5 threshold forms the La Nina. Water temperature has been below the line at least since early July. However, NOAA says "La Niña is favored to emerge in September-November (60% chance)". https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml   So, why is it not a La Nina event already but a chance for it?" Roger’s reply:

Highlights Cash crude oil was $2.91 higher and futures were $2.76 higher yesterday for several reasons: Expectations Israel will hit Iran’s crude oil fields and refineries (not likely to happen). Oil platforms shutting down as Hurricane Milton moves across the Gulf of Mexico.   For the second consecutive week, the largest speculative short position held by speculators. Ukraine said it had struck a major offshore oil terminal in Russian-occupied Crimea. China announced its eco

Highlights Nothing in yesterday’s reports changed our price outlook. We expected neutral to somewhat friendly numbers and that is what USDA gave us. USDA reduced the size of the 2023 U.S. soybean crop by 3 million bushels to 4,162 million bushels. USDA did not change the 2023 corn production.   The biggest surprise, but not a big one, was corn demand was substantially more (84 million bushels) than the market expected. That was a 0.56% increase in demand and a reduction of 4.

Highlights There is another tropical storm that will likely become a hurricane in the Gulf to disrupt crude oil production.   Both wars escalated a bit more yesterday. Israel said their air strikes hit 1,300 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, where health officials said 356 people were killed and 1,246 people were injured yesterday. The Biden Administration announced an additional 40,000 US troops to the northern border of Israel.   Growth in India's business activity slowed to a

Highlights Compared to July, the NOPA August crush decreased 14% to 158.008 million bu. The market expected 171.325! The August crush was down 2% from a year ago. This is the lowest August total since 2017 and the lowest monthly total since September 2021. Soybean crush for marketing year just completed set monthly records for 10 out of the 12 months.    The soy oil inventory on August 31st was 1.138 billion pounds, down from 1.499 billion last month. The market expected 1.35

Highlights A developing tropical storm that is expected to track through the Gulf of Mexico and hit parts of Texas and Louisiana by Thursday will hit 60% of the US refining capacity and a large percentage of off-shore drilling and pumping platforms.   Colombian rebels have renewed their war on that nation’s oil industry with a wave of pipeline attacks that sent crude spilling into rivers and clouds of black smoke billowing into the sky. The National Liberation Army is reactiv

Highlights The USDA reported the crush numbers for July: Soybean crush in July was 193 million bushels, 8 million bushels more (4.3%) than a year ago.   Corn crush was 527 million bushels, 4% more than a year ago. Corn for ethanol was 474 million bushels, also 4% more than a year ago. Canola crush was 230,516 tons, 10.1% more than a year ago.   Cottonseed once refined was 32.8 million pounds, 27% more than a year.   USDA will issue the next S&D on Thursday, 12 September. Trad

Highlights There was no agreement on Sunday in the Gaza ceasefire talks that took place in Egypt . Neither Hamas nor Israel agreed to...

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 USDA's August S&D report summary: Corn harvested acres down 700,000 to 82.7 million. Corn yield up 2.1 bushels per acre to 183.1. Corn production up 47 million bu to 15.147 billion bushels; corn usage up 70 million bushels. Bean harvested acres up by just over 1 million acres (was the USDA Actual Planted Acres in June wrong?). Where did those acres come from? The USDA reported “prevented plantings” of 2.670 million acres of corn, 775,000 acres of soybeans, and 389,

Highlights Japan's stock market suffered its second largest stock market decline ever on Monday, world markets followed. Not that it was anything Japan did to cause the sell-off.   The world-wide sell-off was triggered by the US economy showing much higher unemployment and many fewer new jobs than expected on Thursday.       The Fed should have been cutting interest rates last month as the US economy was on an inflation-controlled landing pattern and the Fed did overshot the

Highlights Crop Condition as of Sunday evening: Winter wheat is 82% harvested, 2% more than the 5 year average pace. Spring wheat is 1% harvested, 2% behind the 5 year pace.     Today is the first day after the Gann Cycle technical analysis system projected a major low for CBOT commodities based on 60 year and 30 year cycle analysis. Any of you Gann analysts are welcome to share your insight.   Market analyst Angie Stetzer of Consus Ag Consulting, LLC, wrote early yesterday m

Highlights All three wheat classes were lower yesterday, but the price free-fall was stopped by Egypt and Algeria submitted tenders to buy wheat. However, many wheat market analysts expect wheat to continue in a down trend as Northern Hemisphere harvest progress is more rapid and larger than normal. Despite the USDA increasing the size of the world wheat production by 5.5 million mts last Friday, the world will still produce less wheat than it uses this marketing year for the