North Gower Grains

Wednesday was a mostly negative day for our markets.  Spot corn closed up 1/2, spot soybeans closed down 10, harvest winter wheat closed 5 3/4 and harvest spring wheat closed down 1 1/4.  In the overnight trade all of our markets are back on the positive side.  Oil closed up $3.29 yesterday at $92.96 per barrel.  It is weaker this morning with it now trading at $92.11 per barrel.  Our dollar had a high yesterday morning before noon of $0.733 US and has trended lower since then.  This morning it is currently valued at $0.731 US.

Soybean prices fell late in the trading day yesterday after trading earlier in the day near 10 cents to the positive side.  It is thought that managed money took some profit out of the market and cashed in some of long position.  As we noted yesterday the long position is slowly being liquidated and hopefully this remains a slow change in their position so that they do not push the market too hard on the down side.

Wheat prices also pulled back yesterday as the market has seemed to reach some trading resistance on the high side.  Remember that US wheat is overpriced on the world market and therefore decreased supplies in the US will only drive prices to a certain level.  Reports out of Russia also has their wheat crop projections increasing this year due to some favourable growing conditions for their winter wheat crop coming out of dormancy this spring.  Of course this is a negative for wheat prices as Russia is usually the lowest price provider of wheat to the world market.  Harvest wheat prices for this year remain favourable and it might be a good time to get some crop priced out.

Weekly ethanol production in the US was decreased by 81,000 barrels per day from the previous week to come in at 1.040 million barrels per day.  Production on a year to date scenario is up about 2% from last year as ethanol crush margins remain very favourable especially with the current elevated price of crude oil.  The decrease in production for last week was mostly related to spring maintenance and shut down in different ethanol plants.  We should note that this occurred here in Eastern Ontario also with the Greenfield Global plant in Johnstown closed last week for its planned spring maintenance.

President Trump has supposedly extended the ceasefire in the war with Iran to an indefinite term.  Hopefully some negotiations are taking place to end the current conflict.  Whatever is occurring we see that crude oil prices are bouncing back up this week.