BASIC & RECENT MARKET INFO

Highlights Wheat harvest in Central Kansas started yesterday. They must have had some pretty dry weather… This is when wheat harvest usually starts in Texas. April jobs data on Friday was bullish and sent stocks soaring and bonds falling (higher interest rates). Interest rate hikes may not be pausing after all with the US adding jobs for the 13th consecutive month. The government reported the US added 253,000 jobs in April. The market expected 180,000. Where is that recessio

Highlights Russia said Sunday it will not approve any new vessels to load Ukrainian grain unless their operators guarantee the transits will be done by May 18, the date the corridor deal will end unless all sanctions on Russia are lifted. Ukraine exports mostly corn and wheat. Eugene mentioned in the Weekly Basis yesterday that May corn gained 14¢ on the July corn last week. May corn closed the week 48¢ over the July. In 2022, May went 44¼¢ over the July on 3 March. May co

About pricing under breakeven From Kyle (and much the same from many folks yesterday midday): "Do I contract new crop at a price under my breakeven? I know... I hate to even ask it. I recently talked with a local grain buyer who is now retired and out of the game, so he has no skin in it anymore. He said he would sell all old crop and contract 50% new crop at today’s price. I said "well that's under my breakeven..." His reasoning was Brazil has a stellar crop (every 1 bu los

Highlights A major winter storm is expected April 3 to 5 from the Central Rockies to the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest, bringing widespread heavy snow and blizzard conditions. The USDA said Friday farmers in Michigan will plant 50,000 more acres of corn this year than in 2022; Minnesota will plant 350,000 more acres of corn; South Dakota will plant 150,000 more and North Dakota will plant 800,000 more acres of corn in 2023 than 2022. That is 1.350 million additional acres

Highlights The stock value of First Republic Bank (FRB) slid to an all-time low yesterday after S&P Global lowered FRB’s credit rating for the second time in a week. FRB has moved to the top of the list of “most likely to fail” banks after Credit Suisse was absorbed by Switzerland’s largest bank. FRB was second on that list the day SVB was closed by regulators. Since then, FRB has been extended quite a few “lifelines” and should be much less likely to fail now than it was on

Highlights Crude oil traded 80¢ to $1.22 higher most of Tuesday evening to about the start of the business day in Europe. Crude oil prices lost $6 before recovering almost $2 on the settlement. It traded lower than any time since early December of 2021 and is 50% of its price just 53 weeks ago. The reason for the weakness in crude oil was the irrational fear of a world-wide bank failure as the troubled Credit Suisse Bank was once again in the spotlight when Saudi Arabia’s ma

Tidbits Yesterday morning, the USDA announced the sale of 612,000 mts of old crop corn to China. While it is important the US sold that much corn, it is also very important that it was China that bought it because some analysts were saying China had bought so much cheap corn from Brazil, they doubted China needed US corn. Few market analysts remember that 30+% of China was on covid lock-down for nearly three years ending in January. There is a huge pent-up demand for everythi

Highlights On Sunday, China’s National Development & Reform Commission reported to the annual meeting of parliament the broad goals and plans for the year ahead. Since China is the #2 economy in the world and seeks to become #1 economy and it is a major trade partner for most countries of the world, whatever China plans to do is important. China’s 2023 goal is for the economy to expand by ~5%, which is a half percent lower than last year's target. Actual growth in 2022 was

Highlights Agrinvest considers the 2022 global corn crop the biggest failure since 1996. Crops failed in parts of the US, Europe, Ukraine and Argentina. In all, the reduction exceeds 50 million tons from a year ago. USDA reports on its world S&D the corn produced in 2022 was 61 million mt (2.41 billion bushels, 5%) less than the corn produced in 2021. In Kansas, the largest wheat producing state in the United States, just 19% of its acres are rated good to excellent for the

Highlights United Airlines announced yesterday it launched a $100-million investment to support start-up companies developing and exploring the production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) to accelerate the research, production, and technologies associated with SAF. For more details, go to: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/United-Airlines-Launches-Fund-To-Support-Sustainable-Fuel-Start-Ups.html The U.S. Purchasing Managers Index (PMI), which tracks the man

Yesterday morning: frost in Cordoba, Argentina. That is corn in the background. No information of how widespread or how serious the...

Highlights Adani Group is an Indian multinational conglomerate. It was founded by Gautam Adani in 1988 as a commodity trading business. The Group's diverse businesses include port management, electric power generation and transmission, renewable energy, mining, airport operations, natural gas, food processing and infrastructure. In April 2022, Adani Group capitalization moved above the US$200 billion mark. Hindenburg Research LLC is a New York investment research firm with a

Highlights The Federal Reserve increased its base interest rate 25 basis points (one-fourth of 1%) yesterday as expected. The market acted like it was expecting a larger increase as the dollar index went sharply lower after the news and commodity prices recovered. Brazil's soybean January exports were 850,000 mts, down 65% from a year ago. Rain every day is a problem at harvest time. The U.S. ag attaché in Argentina slashed its estimate of the country’s soybean crop to 36

Highlights Mato Grosso (MT) grows 30+% of Brazil corn and beans. It is 2.5 times the size of Texas. Its soybean harvest is 13.6% complete vs 31.8% last year. Last year was a little faster than normal harvest pace for beans and planting safrinha corn. If the rains continue to substantially delay soybean harvest for two more weeks, the safrinha crop production will be substantially reduced and very bullish corn. Soybean export inspections yesterday were 68 million bushels; wha

Highlights Rains of 1 to 3 inches (2.5 to 7.5 cm) Friday night through Saturday covered most of Argentina’s crop areas, namely the provinces of Buenos Aires, Entre Rios, Santa Fe and Córdoba. Another front is expected to bring more rain on Wednesday.to Saturday. The Federal Reserve governor (12 Fed governors) who advocated very aggressive interest rate increases in 2022 to control inflation is now recommending substantially scaling back the effort to tighten the money supply

Highlights Last month, insurance companies said they would add war risk to the ships in the Black Sea as of January 1st. Last week, the cost to charter a freighter to or from the Black Sea was up more than 20% as insurance companies did what they said they would do. Freight rates from Black Sea to China went from $68 to $82 per mt. That price increase will go a long way to make US wheat and corn more competitive in the world marketplace. Did you notice the US wheat basis firm

Highlights The EU plans to apply price caps on natural gas prices have hit a dead-end for the fourth time this year after EU energy ministers failed yesterday to reach an agreement amid deep divisions. These are the same people who are trying to decide on Russian crude oil prices. The head of Brazil's election court rejected a complaint from President Jair Bolsonaro's allies to challenge the presidential election, which the incumbent lost by a small margin. Nationwide prote

Highlights Yesterday morning, CBOT wheat went from about 15 lower to unchanged in about ten minutes. The reason was the latest round of Russian rocket strikes on Ukraine caused the largest nuclear power plant in Europe to be completely disconnected from the power grid. The Zaporozhnya is running on 20 backup generators which have enough diesel fuel to keep them running for 15 days. Supposedly, a catastrophe of radiation exposure will occur if those generators stop before the

Highlights Yesterday morning, the USDA announced the sale of: 126,000 mts of soybeans to China 198,000 mts of soybeans to Spain Tidbits For the week of October 25, the St. Louis barge spot (now, current) rate increased almost 22% from last week to $88.46 per ton this week. However, this rate is lower than the all-time peak of $105.85 per ton for the second week of this month. The U.S average diesel fuel price continued to rise for the third consecutive week to $5.341 per gal

Tidbits The weather has been so dry, harvest will soon be over and the basis will firm much sooner than normal. The corn basis has already firmed from a week ago in about 30% of the Corn Belt with below average yields. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the US has 25 days of diesel fuel left. In 2019, diesel supplies were down to a 25 day supply. In 2008, when crude oil hit $147 per barrel and the economy was in the worst recession since the Great Depre