Markets

Daily Market Wire 4 December 2020

Lachstock Consulting December 4, 2020

Wheat futures fell a little, canola and soybeans rose 1 per cent. US dollar weakened further.

  • Chicago wheat March contract down US4cents/bushel to 584.5c/bu;
  • Kansas wheat March contract down 4c/bu to 549.75c/bu;
  • Minneapolis wheat March contract down 2.5c/bu to 553.5c/bu;
  • MATIF wheat March contract down €1.25/t to €203.25;
  • Corn March contract up 2.75c/bu to 426.5c/bu;
  • Soybeans January contract up 15.25c/bu to 1168.25c/bu;
  • Winnipeg canola January contract up C$4/t to $589.10/t;
  • MATIF rapeseed February contract up  €4 to €407.50;
  • Brent crude February up US$0.46 per barrel to $48.71;
  • Dow Jones index up 86 points to 29,970;
  • AUD firmer at $0.744;
  • CAD firmer to $1.286;
  • EUR firmer at $1.214.

International

  • Macro markets remain excited about the vaccine rollouts, with expectations that approval will happen soon in the US, where some of the worst disease impacts continue to grow.
  • US/China politics are looking more and more interesting into 2021, with comments the other day from apparent President-Elect Biden that he would not be removing tariffs on China or cancel the trade deal after the inauguration.  Despite the conflict over Trump’s actions, protective anti-China measures have been gaining support in the US in the last few years. We do note that, despite recent sales, they’re still miles away from the “commitments” made on agricultural trade.
  • Despite rumors yesterday about Chinese purchases of wheat, corn, we didn’t see any flash sales reported today.
  • Regular export sales had corn at 1.4 million tonnes (Mt), beans 0.4Mt (a marketing year low), and wheat at 446,000t.  Sorghum/milo sales had 176,000t of new China business, plus 106,000t from unknown.
  • South American weather maps continue to look better for the crop there, with a nice widespread rainfall event across almost all of the central Brazilian soybean area.  Earlier planted crops have been showing more stress in recent days, but the hope for farmers there is that the beans can rebound with the coming moisture
  • Black Sea region weather maps are starting to flirt with moisture on the deferred outlooks, but still nothing substantial and snow cover remains poor with the cold snap
  • StatsCan pegged Canada’s wheat crop at 35.2Mt, which is above surveyed ideas tending slightly under the mid 34s.  They also pegged canola at 18.7Mt, which was below most private estimates in the 19s. Having said that it would be a fairly normal trend for them to later increase their estimates
  • The US drought monitor was out again with a ~2% increase in extreme/exceptional drought areas.  Most of the changes were not in winter wheat areas, although on the flip side there was no noted improvement across the stressed western Hard Red Winter wheat belt.

Australia

  • Barley markets started to weaken late in the day yesterday, with bids dropping $4-5/t across most of WA and SA
  • Patchy storms across the eastern Darling Downs saw isolated registrations of 50+ mm rain reported.  Damage has been reported in some areas from the high winds, but anyone that got moisture has been happy to see it and there are some hopes increasing for sorghum fields
  • Weather maps have more light rains on the forecast for southern Vic into the weekend, but next week forecasts looking very good for fieldwork across the east coast.

 

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