This morning, the Eurodollar is steady at 1.2120; the rouble is up vs. dollar at 73.80.
The crude oil in NY is stabilizing at 45.40 $/b.
Slowly but surely, the business is slowing down before the end-of-year break.
In Europe, the Brexit is still at a standstill a few days ahead of the end of the transition period.
A no-deal would have serious consequences on the relationship between the EU and UK.
This morning, State French Agency will release its estimation of soft wheat acreage in France.
According some agricultural consultancy agency, 5.2 M ha would have been seeded, up by +900 000 ha from last year.
The European Union said that soft wheat exports reached 10.44 Mt on December 6.
This is a -21% decline from last season to date.
Barley exports are amounting to 3.23 Mt, -12% lower than last year.
Corn imports are -23% under last season’s level at 7.23 Mt.
During November, Ukraine exported 4.6 Mt of grain.
It is significantly less than in the same period last season (5.3 Mt).
In particular, there was a drop in wheat shipments compared to the same month in 2019 with 1.19 Mt compared to 1.94 Mt.
More than 12 Mt of wheat have been exported since the beginning of the season, which means that only 5.5 Mt remain to be loaded to reach the limit set by the memorandum signed between the authorities and the exporters.
With 0.3 Mt of barley loaded, the total since the beginning of the season reaches 3.7 Mt.
Finally, an acceleration of corn shipments is to be noted with 3.1Mt loaded in November.
This brings the volume of corn already shipped to 5Mt for the current harvest.
In this context, yestarday, MATIF grains and oil seeds complex, opened lower and failed to make ground as EU and Black Sea cash markets slid.
In the wake of soybean, rapeseed prices too crumbled on Euronext.
But, as European balance sheets are in sharp deficit, so, losses on this market could be limited.
Traders are now cautious ahead of the USDA’s report of this Thursday.
This is a normally quiet report, and few in the market are expecting any kind of fireworks as the USDA normally leaves domestic figures largely unchanged prior to the January stocks and production reports.
Soybean prices are weakened by the prospect of a wet weather in Brazil during this week.
South American weather maps are looking fairly good for a band of rain across central Mato Grosso/Goiás this week, although most of Argentina is missing out on any follow-up rains.
Brazilian beans were pegged at 90-per-cent planted, only slightly behind normal, and earlier planted fields in the south are starting to flower.
Argentine export terminal strikes have been lifted and operations are back to normal.
Most of the southern Australia harvest zones it’s complete.
Aussie grain markets continue to bleed lower through the harvest period.
Cash markets kicked off the week lower again.
With the market already at export parity, the trade and domestic consumers seem to be content to pick up grain only it is needed.
With such a big crop coming at them, there is no need to chase grain.
Western Victoria’s canola harvest has kicked off with impressive yields coming in, and oil content continuing to be very high.
So, markets are continuing their decline in this year-end period and, buying interest picked up yesterday in the US day session in Chicago, helped only lift values from early lows and soybean, finished the day nearly unchanged.
On the international stage, South Korea bought 60 000 t of corn probably sourced from USA.
Taiwan has launched a corn tender in 65 000 t.
Weekly US export inspections were fairly normal, with 734,000t of corn, 2.3 million tonnes of soybeans, and 531,000t of wheat, including a cargo of durum ex Great Lakes to Italy.
No sales of sorghum were reported.
So, funds were net buyers in 15 000 lots of corn and 2 500 lots of wheat.
They were neutral in soybean.
