Closing Comments

Craig Haugaard

May 4, 2015

Corn:

Corn continues to have no friends.  With excellent planting weather across most of the Corn Belt last week the trade was looking for this afternoon’s planting progress report to reflect a rapid planting pace and the price action reflected that.  After the close that expectation came to fruition as corn planting was reported at 55% complete compared to 38% on average.  Emergence is running slightly behind the five year average coming in at 9% versus the 12% average.

Not all was gloom and doom as export inspections checked in at 41.4 million bushels.  That was better than the top end of the range of estimates.  We now need to average 33.5 million bushels per week for the rest of the marketing year to hit the USDA export target of 1.8 billion bushels.

Closing Comments

Lynn Miller

May 1, 2015

Global celebrations of the May Day holiday kept markets relatively quiet and the trade volume below average.  Since I can’t find much good news on a beautiful Friday (exactly everything a trader sees as reason to sell going into a weekend). I thought I would give some hope, at least to the idea, that we might get some rain.  According to NOAA, we have a 60% chance of receiving above average moisture over the next 6-10 days.

Closing Comments

Craig Haugaard

April 30, 2015

We had a fresh weekly drought map released today so I am going to run that for your viewing pleasure.  I don’t think it will shock any of you to see that we according to the map we are dry in our trade area.

Closing Comments

Craig Haugaard

April 29, 2015

I want to kick things off today by looking at the dollar.  Over the past few months we have spent time talking about the negative impact that the strong dollar has on commodity prices.  With that in mind it is interesting to try and read between the lines of today’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting.  In the March meeting they indicated that an interest rate hike in April was unlikely which led many analysts to believe we would see an interest rate hike in September.  In today’s meeting they left the interest rates unchanged but also removed any calendar references from the post-meeting statement.   One analyst that I spook to is of the opinion that the FOMC may not be in a position to increase the federal funds rate until 2016.  A delayed interest rate hike from the Fed would be bullish for stock index futures and bearish for the U.S. dollar.  That, of course, is where it starts to impact us. If we see the dollar start to weaken it may have a positive impact on commodity prices.  As you can see on the following weekly continuation chart this week has given us a sharp break in the value of the dollar.

Closing Comments

Craig Haugaard

April 28, 2015

I found myself reading North Carolina folklore last night with special interest on how to make it rain.  They had a number of great suggestions that I thought I would pass on to you because as dry as it is trying some of these couldn’t hurt anything.

1)      To make it rain, kill a snake and lay it belly up on a fence.

2)      When the peacock screams rain follows.

3)      If a dog eats grass it is going to rain.

4)      When horses sweat in the stable, sniff loudly, and switch their tails violently you may expect rain.

5)      Bathing a cat causes rain.

So, there you have five good folklore signs or events that will bring about rain.  I may start on this tonight by holding my wife’s cat underwater for a while and if that doesn’t do the trick move on to some snake killing.

Closing Comments

Craig Haugaard

April 27, 2015

Corn:

We kicked off the day with the weekly export inspections report.  The number came in at a very solid 50.9 million bushels which was above the top end of the range of trade estimates as well as ahead of the 34.1million bushels that we need to post each week to hit the annual USDA export estimate.  In spite of being a surprisingly good number it only provided brief support to the market and then the traders got back to beating on it.

Closing Comments

Lynn Miller

April 24, 2015

Risk Off – that appears to be the theme of the day as no one is willing to carry much risk into a weekend.  Good weather will mean good planting and recent rains have wheat traders looking for improved conditions.

The grain complex just seems to be working from the lyrics of a bad country song lately.  Nothing seems to make things better, not even good export numbers.   What’s next – running momma over with a darned old train?

On the day funds have been sellers of 5,000 beans, 7,000 corn and 3,000 wheat.

Closing Comments

Lynn Miller

April 23, 2015

No new news on the fundament front to speak of today, again.  I’m starting to feel like a broken record.

Once again the CME has reviewed the markets and made changed to our price limits.  Both Initial and Expanded.  These new values go into effect on May 1^st.

Closing Comments

Lynn Miller

April 22, 2015

These two maps pretty much sum up what we will see the next two weeks.  Yup, you guessed it, probably going to see markets to continue on the defensive.  Below average rain fall and normal/below average temps will keep the planting window open and progress moving along.

Craig’s Closing Comments

April 21, 2015

In the past few weeks it seems that hardly a day has gone by without the H5N2 avian influenza virus being found in another flocks of turkeys.  We have mentioned it in this space the past few weeks but have never put it into context.  Since this outbreak we have destroyed a little over two million birds, mainly turkeys.  That is a lot of birds and can certainly have an impact on local situations.  On the other hand, turkey production in the USA averages around 235 million birds a year and currently production is running roughly 4% ahead of last year.  When viewed from that perspective the loss of two million birds is probably not enough to have a significant impact on the overall market.