eCBOT Close, Early Call
The overnight markets closed narrowly mixed, with nearby August beans 4 cents higher and the bulk of the other more active contracts around 3-4 cents lower. Wheat and corn closed mostly with just token gains of less than a cent.
Cool and wet conditions prevail across large parts of the Midwest, which may not be harming but isn't helping corn, beans or spring wheat development on late-planted crops. As we know a late harvest means potential vulnerability to an early freeze.
The USDA report 116,000 of new crop beans sold to guess who overnight. That's right the cheeky Chinese are still in the market.
It looks like they are going to auction off more corn and beans next week. Or at least attempt to. With prices likely to be set where they were this week they are unlikely to find any soybean buyers. Only around a third of this week's corn offers got taken up, so that might not go too well either.
The USDA are widely expected to reduce corn acres in their Aug 12 WASDE report, after they announced a 'recount' this week. What's the betting that they will reduce acres and increase yields by an equivalent amount to leave us with almost exactly the same number we started with?
If they do reduce corn acres then, although they won't issue a revised soybean acreage number, it surely implies that there are more new crop beans in the pipeline. As they are probably understating soybean yields too at the the moment, there are probably a lot more beans in the pipeline.
Old crop beans are still very tight though, and look set to continue that way with Chinese buyers still coming back to feed at the trough.
Some of the panic has gone out of the wheat market, as it now seems more likely according to trade talk that the CFTC will only make a few storage tweaks to the CBOT contract, rather than demand a wholesale review of index fund activities. The latter could have started an exodus from wheat futures.
Crude is holding it's own around $67/barrel and the dollar and equity markets are looking pretty flat to end the week too.
Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: corn called steady to 2 higher; beans called 2 to 4 lower (Nov); wheat called flat to 2 higher.
Cool and wet conditions prevail across large parts of the Midwest, which may not be harming but isn't helping corn, beans or spring wheat development on late-planted crops. As we know a late harvest means potential vulnerability to an early freeze.
The USDA report 116,000 of new crop beans sold to guess who overnight. That's right the cheeky Chinese are still in the market.
It looks like they are going to auction off more corn and beans next week. Or at least attempt to. With prices likely to be set where they were this week they are unlikely to find any soybean buyers. Only around a third of this week's corn offers got taken up, so that might not go too well either.
The USDA are widely expected to reduce corn acres in their Aug 12 WASDE report, after they announced a 'recount' this week. What's the betting that they will reduce acres and increase yields by an equivalent amount to leave us with almost exactly the same number we started with?
If they do reduce corn acres then, although they won't issue a revised soybean acreage number, it surely implies that there are more new crop beans in the pipeline. As they are probably understating soybean yields too at the the moment, there are probably a lot more beans in the pipeline.
Old crop beans are still very tight though, and look set to continue that way with Chinese buyers still coming back to feed at the trough.
Some of the panic has gone out of the wheat market, as it now seems more likely according to trade talk that the CFTC will only make a few storage tweaks to the CBOT contract, rather than demand a wholesale review of index fund activities. The latter could have started an exodus from wheat futures.
Crude is holding it's own around $67/barrel and the dollar and equity markets are looking pretty flat to end the week too.
Early calls for this afternoon's CBOT session: corn called steady to 2 higher; beans called 2 to 4 lower (Nov); wheat called flat to 2 higher.