Overview of currency and futures markets:
Lower for grain and oilseeds.
- CBOT Wheat May contract was down -1.25c to 421c,
- Kansas wheat down -4.5c to 428c,
- corn down -2c to 356.75c,
- soybeans down -8.75c to 991c,
- Winnipeg canola down -13.3$C to 488.3$C,
- Matif canola down -2.25€ to 405.5€.
- The Dow Jones down -17.45 to 20643.84,
- Crude Oil down -0.35 to 47.68c,
- AUD down to 0.762c,
- CAD up to 1.334c, (AUDCAD 1.018)
- EUR down to 1.078c (AUDEUR 0.707).
Corn
Corn lower again on technical weakness and a fund community, which keeps adding to their short positions. Export sales were strong at 1.35Mt, while ethanol production was slightly lower, but still streaks ahead of last years production. Next week will be interesting with large increases to the short position expected in the Commitment of Traders (COT) report , plus the USDA’s quarterly stocks and planting intentions report.
Soybeans
Canola
Canola was hit hard. It began with some mild speculative selling, but rumors of export cancellations lead the market through technical support, which triggered sell stops. The CAD was roughly unchanged and palm oil was lower.
Wheat
Australia
Australia’s forecast is pretty mild for the next 8 days, with only light showers expected for parts of NSW. The AUD has closed lower which is a positive for growers looking to sell, liquidity has been reasonably low on the break in futures/rally in currency. Despite the slow down in liquidity boats keep getting loaded, with exports progressing well, barley is expected to achieve over 7Mt and wheat looking comfortable at 19Mt. Barley is the one to watch, with limited carry-in and strong export demand, the market may oversell available supplies and force domestic demand to ration.
¹Editor’s note : Open interest represents the total number of contracts either long or short that have been entered into and not yet offset by delivery. Each open transaction has a buyer and seller, but for calculation of open interest, only one side of the contract is counted.
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