Headlines:

  • Wheat futures rally on cut to US sowing hopes
    US wheat prices got a boost as ideas of winter wheat plantings were slashed. Private analytics firm Informa Economics lowered its estimate of US winter wheat plantings for 2017 to 33.761m acres, from a previous estimate of 35.421m acres. CRM AgriCommoties said the news “led to a fresh round of short-covering as Chicago wheat speculators currently hold bearish bets with a near record 152,000 contracts short”. Over the pond, analyst Strategie Grains left its forecast for EU wheat plantings at just over 60m acres, unchanged from their previous forecast. At 24.3m hectares, the sowings are barely up from last year, in line with other forecasts of flat.
  • Is it time to rethink US soybean crush forecasts?
    US soybean processing demand, and soymeal exports, are beating expectations, but does this call into question the US Department of Agriculture’s recent downgrade to US crush numbers? This month the USDA trimmed its estimate of 2016-17 soybean crushing by 20m bushel, to 1.93bn bushels, citing weaker soymeal export demand. “Sales are lagging year-earlier levels to several markets including Mexico, Canada, Thailand, and the European Union,” the USDA said.

 

Summary:

The grain markets finish higher today after starting the trading session a bit slower. Export sales came in and Beans came back strong after posting poor number last week. China had been very active buying up US exports and accounted for almost 605% of the Beans export sales numbers this week. Wheat came in at the top of trade expectations as did Soybean. Corn crushed trade expectations. All three markets responded well to the results. Corn’s sales figures were the 2nd largest of the marketing year. At settlement the nearby contracts finished up 3.50 for Corn, 4.75 for Beans and 6.75 for Wheat. Beyond the export sales report the USDA announce additional fresh sales from private exports. 106.2k metric tons of Corn for delivery to unknown for the 2016-17 marking year was reported.

The US Dollar was only 4 basis points shy of reaching 101 intraday and was close to the highs in late trading. The 13+ year highs for the greenback came on the heels of the markets viewing the jobs and housing reports today as bullish along with Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s suggesting that the central bank could raise rate soon.

nov17