European rapeseed rose 1pc, Canada was on holiday and US markets fell as books were balanced ahead of Monday’s Independence Day holiday.

International

Fairly choppy markets overnight with an early attempt to follow on yesterday’s gains followed by mid/late session weakness across the boards.  Chicago wheat gave up 14¢, KC -20 3/4¢, Minny -13¢, and Matif off another quarter euro on the earlier close.  Corn was up 2.5¢ while beans gave up two cents (Matif +6.5€, Winnipeg closed for Canada Day).  Macro markets had crude spiking a buck fifty to $75.2 WTI / $75.8 Brent after OPEC increased production by less than expected and the DOW has gained 131 points.  The USD index is up to 92.6, with the AUD back to 74.6¢, the CAD $1.244, and the EUR $1.185.

The US boards will be closed on Friday and Monday, for US Independence Day holidays, and will re-open for next Tuesday’s day session, that is, on Tuesday night Australian time.

With the holiday weekend approaching, there’s been a lot of position-squaring and balancing going on. Participants have been taking some profit and calculating risk over any potential changes to weather maps across the next four days.

We’ll see how the weather outlooks change over the weekend, but the latest extended maps runs have a turn back to drier and cool again for the central corn belt and a bit of moisture for parts of northern Iowa and Minnesota.

There’s still nothing coming for spring wheat areas in the US or Canada.  The model runs that had started to flirt with moisture on the extended maps seem to have pulled back again.

Hot weather there is absolutely cooking some of the earlier crops, those that had so far held on fairly well.

Regular export sales reports had 1.7 million tonnes (Mt) new crop beans, of which 1.1Mt was  to China including some of the flashes from the other week. There was also 68,000t new crop corn reported sold, noting that China cancelled a boat of old crop corn. New crop wheat sales reported amounted to 226,000t.

A judge in Brazil has put a block on an attempt by the government to sell concessions which would have allowed private tolls in exchange for maintenance, on BR-163 the main road north for beans heading to Santarem.

The Ukrainian government has cut estimates of new season wheat and barley. It forecast the new season wheat crop at 28.5Mt (Lachstock 29.8, USDA 29.5) and barley 8.3Mt (Lachstock 8.6, USDA 9.1).

To those in the US, a happy 4th of July this weekend.

Australia

Nice moves lower on the AUD overnight, falling to 74.6¢ which should support grains today despite the choppy boards.

Cash markets kicked up sharply yesterday with buyers taking out any older offers that were sitting around.  Old crop east coast markets saw a fair bit of tonnage trade in the $305-312/t range track, and WA $340-345/t FIS.

New season bids on wheat were also up $7-8/t. Bid/offer spreads remain wide and there’s been little trading recently.

BOM maps bringing a few more showers later this weekend for WA, with the potential for them to push further inland into next week.  Similarly in NSW, next week forecasts building up some possible thunder showers across parts of the Central West.

Source: Lachstock Consulting