BASIC & RECENT MARKET INFO

Tidbits Pre-hedge: Thirty minutes before the CBOT closed yesterday afternoon, December corn was up 2¼¢ and settled up 1¼¢. Not much pre-hedging pressure. Was it because of the weekend rain in the forecast? No late pressure in soybeans futures at all, which would be as expected; essentially bean harvest is over.     Rumor is China will soon auction 3.5 million mts of government owned soybean beans. Historically, China offers government stocks at auction when domestic prices ar

Tidbits Pre-hedging:  When the CBOT closes this afternoon at 1:15 PM Central Time, the combines will continue to harvest corn and beans through the weekend. Some of those bushels are going to be hauled to merchandisers and sold. Therefore, in the last 30 minutes of trading today before the CBOT closes this afternoon, merchandisers are going to sell futures contracts to hedge their estimate of how many bushels they will buy this weekend. This is called pre-hedging . Last Frida

Highlights On Saturday, China announced tariffs on over $2.6 billion worth of Canadian agricultural and food products, retaliating against Canadian tariffs introduced in October. The tariffs are scheduled to take effect on 20 March and they match the 100% and 25% import duties Canada slapped on China-made electric vehicles, steel, and aluminum products. Canola was excluded from a China tariff, which was one of Canada's top exports to the world's top agricultural importer pri

Highlights The International Grains Council (IGC) predicts record large global grain production and record large global consumption for the 2024-25 marketing year. More importantly, world carryovers (aka ending stocks) are projected at a 10-year low.   IGC’s report on Wednesday listed total grains (wheat and coarse grains) output at 2.315 billion mts and consumption at 2.325 billion mts with the carryover down to 581 million mts, the lowest since 2014-15.   The records are fo

Highlights Brazil’s Supreme Court on Sunday authorized the government to exempt spending on wildfires and droughts in the Amazon and Pantanal regions from this year’s fiscal target as the country grapples with the economic impacts of its worst drought on record.   The decision clears the way for the government to take action if it submits an executive order to Congress requesting extraordinary measures to address the situation.   According to the National Center for Monitorin

Crop Feedbacks Bill in North Central Kentucky called Roger yesterday shortly after noon to let us know that ADM at Silver Grove, KY, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, pushed (firmed) their soybean bid to $13.00 cash, which was 13¢ firmer than their posted offer. Dave in Northeast Illinois has cut 2200 acres of beans which averaged 55 bu, down 7 bushels from the past two year average. Thanks, Dave. Matt in Northwest/Central Ohio harvested 15 tons of cereal rye forage la

Highlights USDA October S&D will be issued at 10 AM Mountain Time today. Crude oil was weaker yesterday because Saudi Arabia said it will do its very best to keep world crude oil supplies flowing at a constant rate in the event one or more oil exporters decide to restrict or cannot export crude oil. Most eyes are on the possibility of Israel hitting Iran’s oil industry. Yesterday morning, the USDA announced the sale of 121,000 mts of old crop soybeans to China and 213,000

Pre-Hedging October Options Expire today, it will impact the prices at least temporarily. Pre-hedging: In the grain business, pre-hedging is a grain buyer selling futures contracts on Friday afternoons before the CBOT closes to hedge the quantity of bushels he expects he will buy after CBOT closes Friday afternoon and before it reopens the following week. Pre-hedging is a market force to remember every Friday during a harvest season. Today is the first harvest weekend that

Tidbits Chris farms near Andrew, in Central Alberta, Canada northeast of Edmonton. He reported Friday morning: "Good morning, Roger, We finished our spring wheat harvest last night. I figure we averaged about 92 bushels an acre." Hard Red Spring Wheat harvest is nearly complete and this year’s crop currently grades at U.S. No. 1 Northern Spring Wheat. Northern Durum is more than 75% harvested and it is grading as U.S. No. 1 Hard Amber Durum. Black Sea grain market guru, And

Tidbits The NOPA August soybean crush was 161.453, 6.35 million bushels less than the market expected. That was an 11-month low and down 6.8% from July and down 2.5% from August of last year, which is not so bad. The soybean oil stocks in the NOPA report were at 1.25 billion pounds vs. 1.483 billion expected, down 18.2% from July and down 20.1% from a year ago. Get this: the soy oil supplies are at the lowest level since October 2017… that was 6 years ago, Folks. To learn a

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

We apologize for yesterday's email stating the price changes of the outside markets. Certainly some of you had a near heart attack when we reported the markets were trading when you thought they were not. You were correct, they were not trading. Crude oil started trading last evening and the ag commodities will open at 8:30 AM Central Time this morning. A lack of attention to detail is a vice, especially in our business as a service to you. Again, we apologize. Be at war with

Highlights OPEC+ (OPEC + Russia) will meet in Vienna on Wednesday to discuss reducing daily crude oil production by one million barrels per day. The larger-than-expected reduction reflects their fears that the global economy is contracting amid tightening monetary policy and the impact of a stronger dollar on oil prices. OPEC+ insiders say the final decision to reduce production will be made before the Wednesday meeting. Baker Hughes reported Friday the number of oil rigs in

Highlights The Pro Farmer numbers were definitely bullish for corn and neutral for beans. With December corn up 14¼ Friday and November beans up 30, there is room for corn to move higher based upon the report, but the market will not accept Pro Farm’s corn number and it sees the bean number as neutral at best for Sunday evening’s opening. The market probably will price-in a corn yield of 173 to 174, but certainly not 169. If the USDA were to confirm 169 on the September 12th