Thursday was a mostly positive day for our markets. Spot corn closed up 4, spot soybeans closed down 6, spot winter wheat closed up 1 1/2 and spot spring wheat closed up 11. In the overnight trade corn, soybeans and winter wheat are negative with spring wheat positive. Oil closed up $0.21 yesterday at $56.15. It is flat in trading this morning with it now valued at $56.12 per barrel. Our dollar had a high yesterday morning before noon of $0.727 US and has trended lower since then. This morning it is currently valued at $0.725 US.
The corn market has bounced back after a few negative days. It was in danger of falling below all of the 20, 50 and 100 day moving averages but is now firmly above all three. Corn exports out of the US remain the bright spot in this market with updated data showing sales are up 30% year over year with shipments up 69% over last year. There are also rumours that China may have purchased a few cargoes of corn from the US this week. This is yet to be confirmed.
Ethanol production for last week in the US was up to 1.131 million barrels per day from 1.105 million barrels per day last week. Last year at this time they were producing 1.078 million barrels per day. Ethanol stocks increased slightly from 22.353 million barrels up to 22.510 million barrels. Production this year is up just over 1% from last year. We should note however that the USDA has projected ethanol production and corn used for this production to increase about 3% year over year.
The wheat market had a rally yesterday and the analysts I follow could not come up with any real reason. The best they could guess was that it was most likely managed money adjusting their positions. I find it very interesting that when the analysts cannot find any good reason for market changes they almost always revert back to managed money adjusting their positions.
Soybeans were negative again yesterday even with reports that China has most likely purchased about 7 million tonnes of the 12 million tonnes target from the yet unsigned ‘Trade Pact’ between the US and China. The marketplace is treating this as old news now and seems to be focused on the favourable growing weather in South America and how that will bring bountiful supplies going forward. It is getting harder to find any positive reasons for this market to bring us any short term rally.
Friday’s thought: The strongest people are those who choose to stay kind, even when the world is not!
Delores Seiter | 613-880-7458
Bob Orr | 613-720-1271
Tony Mitchell | 613-227-2525
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