Corn, soybean and wheat prices was all trending significantly lower on a round of technical selling and profit-taking yesterday.
In fact, declining demand weighed on wheat and corn, while fundamentals continued to push rapeseed up.
In this context, corn prices fell nearly 2%, and also most wheat contracts losing double digits.
Soybean losses were more muted after prices faded about 0.25% lower.
While rapeseed continued to rise, with break of the 500 €/t level on Euronext’s May 2021 contract.
Also the canola prices, are still posted at very high levels.
The vegetable oil market remains very tense.
It’s expect that Europe will import nearly 6.5 Mt of canola this year, with Australia and Canada as the main sources and this could encourage Canadian producers to increase their canola acreage as much as possible, also due currently high prices level.
Ethanol production in the United States came out again very weak last week and, even if has bounced back from 658k bpd to 849k bpd, is still some 60k bpd below pre-cold snap levels.
On the contrary, American gasoline stocks fell during the period, which gave new upward momentum to crude prices as well as to the entire biodiesel sector.
In this context, energy futures moved higher, with crude oil jumping ahead 2.5%.
Diesel saw gains of around 1.75%, with gasoline up around 1%.
An OPEC + meeting is set for today but rumours says, that OPEC will not follow through on production increases outweighing the large crude draw.
About grains, traders are expecting two important publications this month, the USDA report of March 9 and the “planting intentions” of March 31.
Meantime, export sales this afternoon will be closely monitored to see whether the slowdown in export activity last week is confirmed or not.
Analysts think the agency will show corn sales ranging between 17.7 million and 41.3 million bushels for the week ending February 25.
Actuals will need to make it to the middle of trade estimates to surpass the prior week’s tally of 23.5 million bushels.
About soybean, analysts expect the agency to show sales ranging between 3.7 million and 29.4 million bushels for the week ending February 25, expressing some confidence that volume will surpass the prior week’s tepid tally of 8.8 million bushels.
Analysts also expect to see between 100,000 and 300,000 metric tons of soymeal sales last week, plus another zero to 25,000 MT of soyoil sales.
About wheat, analysts expect the agency to show wheat sales ranging between 3.7 million and 22.9 million bushels for the week ending February 25. The prior week’s volume of old crop sales stumbled to a marketing-year low of 6.2 million bushels.
On the international scene, Algeria is buying 30,000 tonnes of corn, optional origins, tender closes today.
The grain is for shipment by April 15.
Japan purchased 3.0 million bushels of food-quality wheat from the United States and Canada in a regular tender that closed earlier today. Roughly two-thirds of the total was sourced from the U.S.
The grain is for shipment between April 21 and May 20.
Jordan cancelled its call for its international tender to purchase120,000 t of milling wheat from optional origins that closed earlier yesterday.
No reason was given, but prices were likely regarded as too high.
To note, yet another outbreak of ASF reported in China, with the government there confirming positive tests in Yunnan, so some concerns still remain, on the chinese demand.
Tonight we will comment, how will close the sessions.
