Grains, oilseeds futures little changed overnight; Thursday’s settlements as follows.

Slightly higher on wheat overnight, with Chicago closing +2.5¢ to 460 1/2, KC +4 1/4¢ to 430 1/2, Minny +3¢ to 533 1/4, and Matif was up 3/4€ to 189.25. Corn gave up 1 3/4¢ to 360 even and beans sold back 6 3/4¢ to 895 1/4 after the bulls failed to see any excitement in the low export sales. Canola was nearly unchanged (+20¢)at $456.2 and matif closed unchanged at 360 3/4€. Crude oil has come off the recent highs, with WTI off $1 and Brent -90¢ to $63.6 and $70.8 respectively. Meanwhile, the DOW is down 45 points as of writing. Currencies stabilised through yesterday in the EU and US, with the AUD holding at 71.2¢, the CAD at $1.337, and the EUR at $1.125. The Brexit can has officially been kicked down the road again, with a new extension to October 31st. Still no word as to how the UK will reach an agreement, but both sides there are claiming that they intend to work together. Meanwhile, the US/China trade talks are also reportedly going positively (yet again . . .) with comments from officials suggesting they have reached an agreement on some key points – but so far nothing firm has been released.

Export sales from the US excited pork markets yet again, with 77,700t sold last week to China (one of the largest single weekly sales figures on record) – all this despite the tariffs in place on US pork. Grain figures were hardly supportive though, with beans only 270,000t (including no new Chinese demand). We are somewhat surprised that surveys for export sales continue to reflect ~1 million tonnes (Mt) expected weekly sales figures for beans, as such levels require Chinese demand – with the ongoing trade war and South American harvests there is not much incentive to book US beans unless politically driven. Corn sales were slightly lower than expectations at 548,000t (vs survey 6-900,000t) and wheat at 273,000t (vs thoughts up to 500,000t). Wheat figures were mostly to traditional destinations, with little to surprise (noting that the South African boat sold was in last week’s inspections already).

Following up on comments a few days ago about the local crop in Egypt, GASC is reportedly back for wheat again – this time for late May/early June. This is still old crop wheat and should be a competitive tender, with paper calculations putting SRW/French/Russian wheat all within competitive ranges (depending on discounting and finance premiums). We also note that Algerian tender results reported the other day saw some ABCD houses pricing at levels that are within range of working HRW (in addition to some French wheat).

South America crops got bigger

Back locally, rains have started moving into WA already, but unfortunately current models show most of the heavy moisture bushing into the bush and the wheat belt only picking up some 5-10mm. We’re still watching this longer term forecast for the east coast, which is still holding for some storms into later next week for southern NSW and VIC.