US sales positive

The weekly US export sales reports overnight finally revealed the, previously rumoured, Chinese SRW wheat business. It amounted to two boats.  Beans sales were massive, 2.3Mt new crop and corn a solid 2.3Mt also. In what was a very nice week for sales business 175,000t of milo trade to China was also reported.  Beyond the SRW boats to China, wheat sales were mostly as expected, amounting to 617,000t in total.  Next week’s sales figures will also be ones to watch, given the flashes this past week; today’s report covers sales up to 16 July.  Many are hoping to see evidence of other transactions which were below the threshold requiring immediate reporting.

Prompt origination not so easy

What else is going on around the world?  EU and Black Sea harvests are continuing and yields in general remain poor but mostly as expected. There’s more talk that some fields in areas such as the region around Stavropol will end up being abandoned, although it’s not a widespread situation.  IGC cut its global wheat production figure by 6 million tonnes, which is no surprise, and there have been some revisions down of planting estimates in Argentina after the recent weather.  More action in global wheat markets has been reported in the last couple of weeks, and with the lower crops coming off it’s been harder for some traders to originate for prompt shipment.  That’s nothing money can’t fix, but the combination of a comparatively minor ex-harvest gut slot this year and poorer crop outlooks in Argentina is helping to fire up some of the permabulls.  Of course, that’s been the same story for a few weeks now and it’s been hard for markets to sustain any upwards push, in particular because row crops had a good run of weather.

Australia

Today saw a frosty start to the morning through parts of north east Victoria and southern NSW with temperatures spending time below 1 degree. We definitely have felt a colder winter so far. In local markets yesterday the bids and offers through WA, SA and Vic pushed a littler firmer on wheat, while NSW domestic markets remained relatively unchanged. Barley continued to remain flat for the week with no real changes on new season and canola new season markets were a fraction softer on the board by $1-2/t along the east coast. Rain forecast remains very coastal, remaining dry or patchy inland for the next 8-days according to the BOM. Only isolated showers are forecast to push through cropping regions.

Source: Lachstock Consulting