BASIC & RECENT MARKET INFO

Highlights U.S. retail sales rose 0.4% last month after a 0.1% gain in August, the Census Bureau reported yesterday. The market expected a gain of 0.3%.   Applications for unemployment benefits dropped 19,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 241,000 for the week ended October 12. Economists expected it unchanged.   Those two better than expected numbers reduced the probability of a half percent point (50 basis points) interest rate cut in November to near zero, but the mark

Highlights The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) weekly report highlights: U.S. ethanol production was up; market expected it to be down U.S. ethanol stocks were way down; market expected moderate decline to up a little U.S. gasoline demand was 6.4% stronger than the four-week average   Karen Braun shared a summary: USA exported a record volume of ethanol over the last year (Sep 2023-Aug 2024), some 30% above the recent five-year average. USA's 2024 imports of anim

Tidbits The European Commission has proposed a delay of its landmark law Deforestation-Free Products Regulation (DFPR). You may recall that ADM was offering a 15 or 20¢ premium for soybeans with a certificate that the beans were not grown on land cleared of trees within the past few years. That was because ADM wanted to sell soybean meal to Europe in 2025 and, without the DFPR certificate, no commodity would be allowed to enter the EU in 2025. Due to the massive backlash of t

Highlights The US Congress did pass a temporary funding bill yesterday to keep the US government operating until December 20. It is assumed President Biden will sign it since all Democrats in the Congress voted for it.   Grain workers at Canada’s biggest grain loading port did go on strike Tuesday. Vancouver port handled about 52% of grain produced in Canada last year.   About 45,000 dockworkers at every major eastern and Gulf coast port are scheduled to strike midnight 30 Se

Highlights The Federal Reserve reduced the Fed Fund Interest Rate by 50 basis points. Eleven or the 12 board members voted to reduce the interest rate by a half percent. The outlook closing said the Fed expects to reduce the interest rate at least another half percent before the end of 2024.   The Fed referenced the growth of the global and US economy is stable, inflation is coming down, and the labor market is still solid. Powell said the half point cut should send a message

Highlights The US CPI data (inflation at retail level) for August +0.2% as expected. For the past 12 months, the CPI was up 2.5%, slightly less than the expected 2.6%. However, what the government calls the “core” CPI was up 0.3% in August, which was more than the expected 0.2% and core inflation was up 3.2% for the past 12 months, which was as expected, but well above the Fed’s target of 2%.   As a result of the CPI numbers, the interest rate markets show the odds of a half

Highlights Crude oil was supported yesterday by Saudi Arabia's decision to recommend OPEC+ postpone production increase in October. However, the worldwide doom and gloom crowd continues to bad-mouth crude oil demand.   China requested the US immediately lift the tariffs on Chinese goods. Reuters News reports President Biden is expected to decide in the coming days about increasing tariffs on Chinese products.    French wheat growers’ group predicts their soft wheat production

Highlights Statistics Canada reported yesterday the 2024 Canadian corn crop is 15.229 million mts, down 1.2% from last year. The average estimate was 14.967 million mts with a range of 14.6-15.4 million. The Canadian soybean production is 7.15 million mts, up 2.4% from 2023, but 58,000 mts less than the average estimate. The range of estimates was 6.9 and 7.45 million mts. All wheat production at 34.373 million mts, 752,000 mts less than expected, but considerably more than t

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 DTN lead analyst, Todd Hultman, said on August 12 during a webinar about S&D report: “Speculators in the corn market have been encouraged  to hold onto their short positions by the Federal Reserve Board, which is trying to keep prices in check by increasing interest rates… You would think we’re getting down to the lows here somewhere, but technically of course we’re not seeing any signs of that just yet.” Here is Sean Pratt’s summary  for the webinar.   The Consume

Highlights Farmers and agronomists are sounding the alarm that Tar Spot is becoming quite a problem once again in the far Eastern Corn Belt. We recommend you check your fields as many folks have been very surprised by the intensity of the Tar Spot disease in their corn fields treated a month ago.   The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) raised its USA forecast for crude oil demand, although its price outlook for this year and next has been revised down.   The EIA no

Highlights The Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell, said the Fed may be ready to reduce interest in September as recent data added to their confidence that inflation is coming into line with their 2% target. Stock indexes screamed higher on that expectation and the dollar was sharply weaker. The tough-talking face of the HAMAS’ international diplomacy crew, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed Wednesday morning in Iran. He had a major hand in building up Hamas' fighting capacity an

Tidbits The S&P 500 and NASDAQ Indexes were down on Wednesday and had its worst day since late 2022 due to a selloff in high-flying technology stocks. The S&P slid 2.3%, with Tesla shares plunging 12% in the biggest drop since September 2020. The Nasdaq 100 was about 3.7% lower due to Google’s YouTube advertising revenue weakness.   Eduardo Vanin wrote on Wednesday: "Soybean premiums (basis)  FOB Paranaguá and CFR China surged 30 to 40 cents per bushel in just a few days. Far

Highlights Eric Snodgrass: "We use that term derecho when we’re talking about a storm system that produces damaging winds over at least a 400-mile swath. That’s certainly what we got out of this as it went through it produced over 850 reports of severe wind damage, including some tornadoes, along with those really strong winds."   Snodgrass says the system, which hit some areas recently impacted by the remnants of Hurricane Beryl, also caused widespread flooding issues.    "I

Marketing Service & Tools Many (most) agricultural marketing services provide information, but make no pricing recommendations. The eight of us at Wright on the Market do the research to provide you seven days a week the facts a person needs to make informed marketing decisions.   We also provide education on marketing tools and marketing history; for 44 years Roger has been a grain marketing consultant and he has done his best in recent years to share that experience with th

The CBOT will start trading at 8:30 AM Central Time Friday.  Highlights Soybean oil leaped higher yesterday, with August up 1.6¢ per pound. Over the past 6 trading days, bean oil has added 76¢ of value to a bushel of soybeans (6.6¢ gain in value per pound of oil times 11.5 pounds of oil per bushel of soybeans). Tomorrow, we will get vegetable oil analyst Khawaja Haroon’s insights on the vegetable oil market.   The S&P 500 and NASDAQ were sharply higher and made new all-time h

Highlights Yesterday was a painful day for those of us expecting this oversold corn market to recover a bit before tomorrow’s USDA Actual Planted Acres, Quarterly Grain Stocks, and Wheat Production Reports.   Computer programs that track carryover numbers and price history say the corn market is trading a 2.7 billion bushels new crop carryover. The USDA projected carryover is at 2.102 billion bushels.       The USDA used a corn yield of 181 on the last two S&Ds. The best aver

Highlights July CBOT options expire today. A week from today is the Actual Planted Acres, Wheat Production, and Quarterly Grain Inventory as of June 1st. These numbers make the last business day in June the most important report day of the year.  Friday is not only option expiration in the grains but also for stock & index options, index & single stock futures. This could be the largest ever with over $5.1 trillion in option exposure expiring and over $870 billion of that in

Highlights Yesterday morning, the consumer price index for May was unchanged from April and up 3.3% for the past 12 months. Core CPI was up 0.2% in May (+0.1% expected), which was lowest since April 2021. April’s core CPI was +0.3%.   The Federal Reserve announced yesterday afternoon it will hold interest rates steady and pushed out the start of rate cuts to as late as December, projecting only one 25 basis points (one-fourth percent) rate reduction for the year.   China’s ec

Highlights The weekly ethanol report numbers were supportive for corn prices, but the market ignored it. Ethanol production was the second highest ever for this reporting week and the ethanol inventory was down 155,000 barrels from last week.   S&P Global left their Brazilian corn production unchanged at 123 mil. mts (USDA 122) and their soybean number also unchanged at 152 mil. mts (USDA 154).   SovEcon (Andrey Sizov) cut his Russian wheat crop estimate from 82.1 mil. mts ju