Headlines:
- Russian sellers lift prices at Egyptian wheat tender
The prices demanded by sellers of Russian wheat at the latest Egyptian tender rose sharply. Gasc, the state grain buyer for the world’s top wheat importer, bought a cargo of Ukrainian wheat at Friday’s tender. But the state grain buyer bought just one 60,000 tonne cargo, compared to the hundreds of thousands of tonnes it has taken in recent tenders. Gasc paid $188.74 a tonne excluding freight for Ukrainian wheat. This was a touch up from the last time Gasc bought Ukrainian wheat, back in December, when it paid 187.00 a tonne excluding freight.
- Triple downgrade for Argentina’s flood-hit soybean crop
Argentina’s flood-threatened soybean hopes received a triple downgrade, with the country’s farm ministry and two grains exchanges cutting sowing estimates – but not as deeply as some other commentators have done. The Buenos Aires grains exchange – which two weeks ago cut its forecast for Argentina’s soybean sowings for 2016-17 by 300,000 hectares, blaming drought in southern areas – downgraded the total by a further 100,000 hectares, citing “new rains received last weekend” in inundated areas further north. The downgrade, left the plantings estimate at 19.2m hectares, a drop of 900,000 hectares year on year.
Summary:
Mostly a quiet trading day with the markets ending mixed today. Corn and Wheat markets found support but and Soybeans futures finished slightly lower. Weather in South America appears to be the story today. Argentina is still dealing with lots of flooding and even Brazil has been the recipient of lots of precipitation over the last 5-6 days. Some Soybean production regions of Brazil were hard hit causing harvest delays. Despite the delays the yields numbers that are coming through have still be strong.
As mentioned yesterday, producers have been selling into the Soybean really and they continued to do so today. Beans are up against technical resistance but are still holding up pretty well against some selling pressure.
Fresh sales from private exporters were reported to the USDA today. Export sales of 126,312 metric tons of Corn for delivery to unknown destinations for the 2016-17 marketing year were announced. Crude Oil futures were up about a dollar but the US Dollar was slightly lower on the day.
