EU Grains Fall Following Shock Trump Victory

Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at 09:12 | Categorized as

09/11/16 -- EU grains closed mostly lower in line with a general shake-out following the shock victory for Donald Trump int he US presidential election vote.

The day ended with Nov 16 London wheat down GBP2.65/tonne at GBP137.40/tonne, Dec 16 Paris wheat was EUR1.00/tonne lower at EUR160.75/tonne, Feb 17 Paris rapeseed ended EUR4.75/tonne weaker at EUR390.00/tonne and Jan 17 Paris corn was down EUR1.25/tonne at EUR161.75/tonne.

Commodity markets in general were lower following the news of the Trump victory, with only safe havens like gold posting gains. The US dollar and global equities opened sharply weaker too, although a sense of "normality" was restored before the close.

The other big news of the day was the USDA's November WASDE report where the biggest surprise was an upgrade for 2016 US corn yields (to 175.3 bu/acre), contrary to the downwards revision that the market was expecting (to 173.0 bu/acre).

That sent US corn prices tumbling, and wheat did't take a lot of persuasion to follow.

As far as the latter commodity goes, EU production this year was tweaked a bit higher, up from 143.2 MMT to 143.6 MMT, and EU 2016/17 exports were left unchanged at 25 MMT (down 28% on 34.78 MMT last season).

There were no changes made to the wheat balance sheets with regards to production or exports in Russia, Ukraine or Kazakhstan. EU-28 ending stocks were tweaked slightly lower from 10.53 MMT to 10.38 MMT. World ending stocks were raised from 248.4 MMT to 249.2 MMT, contrary to trade expectations of a small reduction.

Aside from the USDA numbers, fresh news was lacking.

The latest French customs data shows that it's not just wheat exports that are suffering this year (soft wheat foreign sales were down 43% year-on-year in September at 737 TMT). French barley exports fell 68% to 264 TMT in September, and corn exports were down 18% to 428 TMT.

Russia said that they'd harvested 120.8 MMT of their 2016 grain crop off 95.4% of the planted area. Corn harvesting is 65% done at 10.6 MMT.

Russian winter grains planting works are said to be complete on 17.2 million ha (98.9% of the government forecast) versus only 15.8 million ha this time a year ago.