Highlights
The world markets were really shaken by Fitch’s lower credit rating for the USA government. For a hundred years, America has been the beacon of all that is solid, successful, and reliable. A lower credit rating only happens to poorly managed entities. Yep, America is, in fact, a poorly managed entity.
Putin and Turkey’s President Erdogan purportedly will discuss a revival of the export corridor. That news may have pressured corn and wheat even more than the down-grade of credit worthiness. Erdogan really wants the deal to be renewed as Turkey was making money hand-over-fist on the inspections and getting the first dibs on every ship load. Putin wants to appear to the world as a good guy willing to discuss feeding the starving people of the world and an end to the war. But Putin is not going to agree to anything until major sanctions are lifted and the banks of Russia are reconnected to SWIFT.
OPEC+ meeting will be held Friday. It is expected production quotas will not be changed as Saudi Arabia already stated it has extended production cuts through September. The next meeting of the OPEC+ committee is on October 4.
Tidbits
Corn export shipments the first six month of 2023 from Argentina, Brazil, USA and Ukraine total 58.4 million mts compared to 77.4 million mts in 2022. What those numbers show is that the US corn exports are not so terrible because Brazil is exporting so much corn; US corn exports are low because Brazil corn is cheaper and the world is simply not buying nearly as much corn as a year ago. Why?