Corn prices on Chicago finally closed higher yesterday for the first time in nearly a week.
Wheat prices in contrast, moved in a bearish environment, mainly due yield-friendly weather forecasts, with some contracts losing more than 3%.
A weaker corn, has put still more pressure wheat prices, tumbling particulary spring wheat.
Soybeans prices spent most of the day in the red.
Indeed, finally, only July futures closed with meager gains while August futures ended up down slightly.
Inflation talk in the US continues to grow after the surge in the April data.
Core inflation, excluding energy and food cost was up 3pc, the highest since 1995.
Consequentially, investors remain cautious after last week’s very volatile ride and are closely watching inflation trends for now.
Meantime energy prices firmed, with crude oil up around 1.5% in afternoon trading to move back above $66 per barrel.
Diesel and gasoline rose by similar percentages.
On Wall St., slumping tech stocks pushed the Dow down 54 points, trading to 34,327.
The U.S. Dollar softened moderately.
Coming back on grains market, corn prices attracted some bargain buying yesterday, also supported by a healthy round of export inspection data from USDA.
Corn export inspections, indeed, reached 74.5 million bushels last week, moving 10.3% above the prior week’s tally.
USDA announced another sale of 1.7 Mt of new crop corn to China.
In one week, the United States contracted 7.8 Mt of 21/22 corn with the Middle Kingdom!
Full year USDA Chinese corn imports are 26Mt. Other 5.0 million bushels, were sold to Mexico.
Both sales are for delivery during the 2021/22 marketing year, which begins September 1.
Soybean prices, on the other hand, wobbled and finished Monday’s session lightly mixed after a choppy session.
Soybean export inspections improved to 11.3 million bushels, however, according to Nopa, the crushing activity for the month of April is 160.3 million bushels against 171.8 million last year to date and lower than traders’ expectations, which weighed on soybean prices.
Meantime, soybean oil stocks are down and below expectations, as dropped from 1.771 billion pounds at the end of March to 1.702 billion pounds last april.
Wheat prices slumped on a round of technical selling largely spurred by improving weather conditions and forecasts across the Great Plains despite wheat export inspections improved another 17% week over week to reach 24.2 million bushels.
Corn and soybean planting progress continued to see some good forward momentum this past week, per USDA’s latest crop progress report, out Monday afternoon and covering the week through May 16.
But analysts were expecting to see more corn acres in the ground by now.
Soybean progress was more in line with trade expectations, meantime.
Corn planting progress reached 80% through Sunday.
That’s up from the prior week’s mark of 67% but four points lower than the average trade guess of 84%.
Still, 2021 progress is only two points ahead of 2020’s pace of 78% even if well above the prior five-year average of 68%.
Corn emergence jumped from 20% a week ago up to 41% through Sunday.
That’s slightly ahead of last year’s pace of 40% and moderately faster than the prior five-year average of 35%.
Soybean plantings are progressing slightly faster than expected, meantime.
Progress reached 61% through Sunday, versus the average trade guess of 60% and the prior week’s mark of 42%.
Planting pace has jumped well ahead of 2020’s pace of 51% and far beyond the prior five-year average of 37%.
Crop emergence moved from 10% a week ago up to 20% through Sunday.
That’s also a faster pace than 2020’s 16% and the prior five-year average of 12%.
Spring wheat plantings are now at 85% through Sunday, up from 70% a week ago but one point below the average trade guess of 86%.
Last year’s pace was just 57%, with the prior five-year average at 71% through the first two weeks of May.
Forty-seven percent of the crop is emerged, versus the prior five-year average of 36%.
For winter wheat, more than half (53%) of the 2020/21 crop is now headed, up from 38% a week ago.
That’s a bit below 2020’s pace of 54% and the prior five-year average of 58%.
Quality ratings dipped a point lower, with 48% of the crop now rated in good-to-excellent condition.
Analysts were expecting to see a one-point improvement, in contrast.
Another 33% is rated fair (unchanged from last week), with the remaining 19% rated poor or very poor (up a point from last week).
Most of the central U.S. will gather up another 0.25” to 1” additional rainfall between Tuesday and Friday, per the latest 72-hour cumulative precipitation map from NOAA.
The agency’s 8-to-14-day outlook predicts seasonally wet weather will continue across much of the Corn Belt between May 24 and May 30, with seasonally warm weather likely for the eastern half of the country during this time.
In this context, funds were neutral on corn and soybeans but net sellers on wheat for 5,000 lots.
Meantime, corn basis bids were steady to mixed to start the week, moving as much as 11 cents higher at a Nebraska processor while sliding as much as 5 cents lower at an Illinois processor.
Soybean basis bids were steady to soft, tumbling as much as 17 cents lower at an Illinois river terminal.
From South America, there is rain forecast for Brazil but, given the pollination window is largely behind us, it’s hard to see what benefit it can provide to balance sheets.
The situation, indeed, remains critical in Brazil and corn production will be well below the 102 million tonnes posted by the USDA last week according to many analysts.
On European market, grain prices continued to decline, despite fundamentals remain buoyant.
The prospects for the harvest, especially in France, are improving thanks to the return of rainfall in recent days.
Meantime, European Union corn imports are down significantly during the 2020/21 marketing year, according to the latest data from the European Commission.
Imports were only at 12.81 million tonnes on May 16 against 18.29 last year to date, a year-over-year decline of 30%.
European Union soybean imports during the 2020/21 marketing year have reached 483.9 million bushels through May 16, which is trending slightly above last year’s pace.
EU soymeal imports are seeing moderate year-over-year declines, meantime, with EU canola imports moderately higher than a year ago.
The imports of rapeseed by the EU, indeed, are at this stage at 5.80 million tonnes against 5.39 million last year.
European Union soft wheat exports for the 2020/21 marketing year have reached 23.44 million tonnes as of May 16 against 31.27 last year to date, which is down 25% compared to the same time last year.
EU barley exports are slightly above last year’s pace, with 6.86 million tonnes on May 16, against 6.77 last year to date.
In this context, all grain and oilseed prices retreated yesterday.
Meantime, this decline is used by Algeria to launch a call for tenders in wheat based on 2 loading periods from July 1 to 15 and from July 16 to 31.
The French origin seems competitive at this stage, and the loading period is early.
From Black Sea basin, Ukrainian analyst APK-Inform estimates the country’s 2021 corn harvest will reach 1.405 billion bushels.
That would be a year-over-year increase of nearly 18%, if realized. Ukraine is one of the world’s top grain exporters.
Ukrainian analyst APK-Inform is alsdo predicting a 2021 wheat harvest of around 1.014 billion bushels, which is unchanged from the group’s prior estimate.
That would be a year-over-year increase of 10.8%, if realized.
Meantime, even if part of Russia is in turn subject to dry and hot conditions, but surfaces higher than expected have prompted analyst SovEcon to raise its national harvest estimate by one million tonnes. , at 81.7 Mt.
SovEcon also estimates that the country’s wheat exports will only reach 29.4 million bushels of wheat in May.
Indeed, during the past week, Russian exporters exported only 200,000 tonnes of grain compared to 500,000 the previous week.
The volume of exported wheat stands at 100,000 tonnes, half less than the previous week.
Since the start of the season, 36.4 Mt of wheat have been loaded, including 7.9 Mt to Egypt, the main destination and 6.5 Mt to Turkey.
The export target for Russian wheat as anticipated by the USDA at 39.5 Mt therefore seems very optimistic, which means that carry-over stocks will be above 12 Mt.
Russia is the world’s No. 1 wheat exporter, but sales have slumped significantly since March.
Romania conditions are currently very favorable too.
Aussie local markets kicked off the week largely unchanged across the board and liquidity was subdued.
ASX Jan 22 wheat settled a buck softer to close out at $314/t.
Spot loads did trade into consumptive homes in Victoria.
Wheat was quoted $335-340 for small tonnage.
Old crop barley markets still seem to keep finding a bid along the east coast mainly through Victoria.
Malt demand has been gaining momentum in the market with up country and delivered demand into Geelong/Melbourne.
Northern markets still are catching up post the height of the logistics squeeze with consumers indicating deliveries are still running behind.
On international trade scenario, South Korean importers purchased around 10.4 million bushels of corn from optional origins in a series of deals last Friday.
The purchase was comprised of multiple consignments, with the grain set to arrive between September 5 and September 21.
Taiwan purchased 3.3 million bushels of milling wheat sourced from the United States in a tender that closed last Thursday.
The grain is for shipment starting in July.
Tonigth we will see how the sessions close.
