Headlines:

  • Hurricane Nate ends up more of a mate to corn than cotton
    In the end, the gains brought to cotton futures by the prospect of Hurricane Nate hitting Louisiana on Sunday did not stick. Sure, besides wind damage, Nate (currently a tropical storm, but expected to step up to a hurricane on Saturday) is expected to bring “rainfall totals across cotton producing regions within the southeastern US… currently forecast at 2 – 4 inches” said Louis Rose at Rose Commodity Group. “This is 2-4 inches more than any cotton producer wants at this point of the season.” But with the last two hurricanes, Harvey and Irma, having failed to bring the crop damage that some had expected, and US weekly export sales data a little disappointing, cotton futures for December ended up closing down 0.8% at 68.27 cents a pound in New York. Mr. Rose had said that “an analysis of pertinent data” suggested US export sales of cotton last week were “likely to be at least as high as last week’s total of nearly 210,000 running bales”.

    In fact, the total was a little under 185,000 bales, upland and pima cotton combined.

  • UN highlights early tests to 2018 wheat harvest prospects
    The United Nations flagged two early tests for 2018 wheat production prospects, as it trimmed ideas for this season’s inventories too – albeit still seeing them hit a record high. The UN food agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization, said that “dry weather in some key growing regions has slowed planting progress” for crop to be harvested next year. The comments follow official data earlier this week showing US winter wheat sowings running, as of the start of this month, at their second slowest pace on records going back to 1996, thanks largely to dryness in the Plains and Midwest which has deterred growers from seedings.

 

Summary:

Strong demand coupled with harvest delays made for a recipe of strong prices for Soybean futures today. November Beans mounted a 10.50 cent rally today to close at 968.75. Corn and Wheat were flat on the day with December Corn adding 1.25 cents at settlement and December Wheat losing ½ cent. The US Dollar returned to strength reaching its highest levels since the middle August. Crude Oil also rallied after falling down to support near 50.

Producers are not really looking to be sellers quite yet at this phase of the harvest and coupled with some poor weather in South America, Soybean is perhaps the recipient of some unexpected support. Today’s USDA Weekly Export Sales report showed Corn coming in well above trade analyst estimates at 814k metric tons. Soybean was closer to the high end of estimates at 1.01M metric tons and Wheat was also close to the high end of expectations with an estimate of 492.3K metric tons.