Nogger's Blog

21/10/14 -- Soycomplex: Beans closed sharply higher on disappointment that the US harvest had only advanced 13 points in the past week to 53% complete as of Sunday night. The weather forecast for the week ahead has now developed a wetter look to it, which was also seen as a bullish factor today. "The weather forecast is warming. The US heartland would experience temperatures that would be 7-12 F above normal. This would indicate mid to upper 60s F for highs and mid-upper 40s F for lows. On the negative side, significant rainfall is predicted that would further disrupt harvesting in a wide swath of the farm belt. Heavy soaking rain would target Missouri, Iowa and Wisconsin, up to 1 – 1.25 inches, but locally more. Moderate rainfall 0.50 to 0.75 inch is predicted in northeast Nebraska, southern Minnesota and western Iowa," said Martell Crop Projections. Yesterday's strong weekly export inspections also lean friendly. So too is soybean plantings in Brazil running at the slowest pace in 6 years. It now looks unlikely that they will be active in the new crop export market until February. Nov 14 Soybeans closed at $9.64 1/4, up 20 cents; Jan 15 Soybeans closed at $9.71 3/4, up 19 1/2 cents; Dec 14 Soybean Meal closed at $342.90, up $13.50; Dec 14 Soybean Oil closed at 31.76, up 6 points.

Corn: The corn market closed around 7-8 cents higher. The same weather problems that are plaguing the US soybean harvest are also leaning supportive for corn. That harvest is even further behind than it is for beans. "Just 31% of corn was harvested up to October 19 compared to a 55% average the past 28 years. Northern Midwest corn has been slow to mature, contributing to harvesting delays. Corn was only 75% ripe in Wisconsin and Michigan in USDA’s most recent crop progress report," said Martell Crop Projections. The lack of progress in Brazil with soybean plantings could have a knock-on, and negative, effect with the size of the safrinha corn crop for 2015 some are saying. Russia said that it had harvested 8.8 MMT of corn off 73% of the planned area. Yields are down at 4.56 MT/ha compared to 5.29 MT/ha a year ago. APK Inform lowered their estimate for this year's Russian corn crop by 5.6% to 11.7 MMT. The Ukraine Ministry reported that the corn harvest there was 60% done on 2.8 million hectares, producing a crop of 14.77 MMT to date. The Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation estimated corn production there at 27 MMT versus 30.9 MMT a year ago. Fund buying was estimated at a net 8,000 lots in Chicago today. Dec 14 Corn closed at $3.56, up 7 3/4 cents; Mar 15 Corn closed at $3.69 1/2, up 7 3/4 cents.

Wheat: The wheat market closed firmer, but well off session highs. Egypt's GASC bought one cargo each of French, Russian and Romanian wheat. The French offer booked was easily the cheapest at $234.44/tonne FOB. It was noted however that this appeared to be a "one off" particularly aggressive offer, as the next cheapest French material was $10/tonne higher than this. At the end of the day however one 60 TMT cargo of wheat isn't going to make much of a hole in the full up French futures stores in Rouen. Russia said that it had now harvested 94% of its 2014 wheat crop, producing 60.9 MMT in bunker weight so far. Rusagrotrans trimmed their forecast for the 2014 Russian grain harvest from 104 MMT to 103.7 MMT in clean weight due to "extreme weather conditions in the eastern regions" saying that bad weather in the Urals will lead to significant yield losses there. Plantings for the 2015 harvest in Russia are 98% done, according to the Ag Ministry. Rusagrotrans forecast the final winter planted area at 16.3 million hectares versus only 15.2 million a year ago when adverse weather prevented some fields from getting sown until the spring. Crop conditions there currently don't look great, I hear. Things are better in Ukraine though, where winter wheat planting is 96% complete. Dec 14 CBOT Wheat closed at $5.19 1/4, up 5 3/4 cents; Dec 14 KCBT Wheat closed at $6.02 1/4, up 1 1/4 cents; Dec 14 MGEX Wheat closed at $5.69, up 2 1/4 cents.