BASIC & RECENT MARKET INFO

Highlights Yesterday’s weekly export sales had soybeans at their lowest or second lowest sales of the marketing year. Before you panic and sell every bean, note that the lowest weekly soybean exports of the marketing year (which began 1 September) is always a month or so after Brazil starts to harvest soybeans. In fact, the lowest sales week of the marketing year usually comes the first or second week of January because Brazil’s soybean harvest usually starts in late December

Highlights The Dollar Index made a ten-month low Thursday and then rallied sharply Friday after the January jobs report stated the US added 517,000 jobs. The market expected only 185,000 new jobs. For any economy to add three times more jobs than expected in one month is blockbuster good news. Demand for goods and services will explode! But, not in the USA... The current managers of the United States monetary policy manage the economy by adding money to the money supply to s

Tidbits Yesterday morning USDA announced the sale of 130,000 mt of old crop corn to unknown. More than a dozen senior Ukrainian government officials were fired yesterday, including the five regional (states, provinces, oblasts) governors, a deputy defense minister, a deputy prosecutor, a deputy head of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office, and two deputy ministers responsible for regional development. The dismissals were in response to international pressure to show Ukrain

Highlights Brazilian bean market analyst, Eduardo Vanin, reports the soybean harvest in Mato Grosso (MT) is being delayed by excessive rain. Take a look at our rain days chart below to see why; the first three locations are where 85% of Brazil’s beans are grown. A form manager with 270,000 acres in MT reported harvest is only 7% complete whereas normally they would be 30% done. He said it is too early to talk about yield losses and he still expects 3 to 5 bushels more than a

CBOT will begin trading at 7 PM Central Time this evening. Crude oil started trading last evening. Highlights NATO defense ministers will meet on January 20. Ukraine, naturally, wants NATO to increase its support for the war and obviously wants to sway EU public opinion to support continued deliveries of military equipment and money to Ukraine. On Sunday, Russian news service reported Ukrainian agents intentionally destroyed a grain elevator in northeast Ukraine to accuse Ru

Marketing question from a client (first week of October 2022): Roger, I have about one-third of my soybeans unpriced. Am I better off to...

Highlights A congressional delegation landed in Taiwan early Sunday morning to meet with Taiwanese leaders and discuss U.S.-Taiwan relations. China has not officially commented on the visit, but yesterday eleven Chinese military aircraft entered Taiwan’s air space as China continues military drills near the island that began before Pelosi’s visits. This visit could be a serious short-term negative for beans in the week ahead. From a Kansas client last Friday: I sold my corn f

To read any or all of the previous lessons on Put Options, go to the Farm Futures link below.

Highlights

Put Options

Highlights

September 2022 CBOT Wheat Puts Continuing Report After the Close Friday June 24, 2022: After tracking the September wheat puts daily from April 14th, 2022, on May 20th, we went a week to update as of the close of business on May 27th and no updates were issued for four weeks until today, June 24th, 2022. A “tic” is the smallest amount a price can change. For grain and soybeans futures, a tic is a quarter cent. For options, a tic is one-eighth of a cent. Options prices, aka

Highlights To us, the weather forecast for the next 14 days indicates beans and, especially corn, should have a dominating rally to test last week’s highs. However, July options expire Friday, which is always a negative factor for futures prices and, admittedly, the weather forecast 10 days out is cooler with a somewhat better chance of light rains. However, there are many days of hot and mostly dry weather in to the first week of July. There will be short covering before thi

Highlights A Russian missile hit the port city of Mykolaiv. Ukraine initially said there was slight damaged a Cargill Grain facility. Pro-Ukrainian press is making it sound like we will all starve to death in a matter of months. We are guessing the high for the day was made last evening. Belarus stated this morning that the rail transportation of Ukrainian grain through Belarus is not going to happen given the EU sanctions Belarus. The 6 to 10 day and the 8 to 14 day forec

Olga has Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering and she was smart enough to marry me, so she is not a person of low intelligence. None-the-less, she had to study off-and-on long hours for 3+ years to understand futures markets and the two methods of market analysis, namely technical and fundamental, before she felt she was ready to start trading futures. At the time, she did not know there was such a thing as options on futures contracts. In part, that was by my design be

Highlights

Highlights

Highlights Grain exports out of the US through the Great Lakes have reached 176,000 mts since the start of the shipping season in March....

Highlights June grain options expire today. China says they have found a gene which will improve wheat’s drought tolerance and nitrogen...

Highlights Yesterday, Target, Lowes, Macy's, and Walmart all issued their quarterly financial reports and both were major, major...