This week’s action:
Corn July down 30 at $5.85
Beans July down 29 at $14.20
Feeders May down 1.075 at $211.075
Fats June down 1.05 at $165.45
Hogs May up 2.75 at $79.725
Corn Dec23 down 20 at $5.28
Beans Nov23 down 23 at $12.63
KC Wheat July23 down 49 at $7.76
Market Recap:
There is growing skepticism the US will ship all our old crop corn sales to China. There are 1.0 MMT (40 million bushels) currently on the books for late this summer that is at risk. Brazilian offers for LH July are about a 50-cent discount to US corn.
All of the production issues in Argentina is not keeping them away from the global corn market. Current Argentine offers are about 85 cents lower than US exporters. The country needs hard currency to repay International Monetary Fund loans.
The good news:
Brazilian soybean basis is rallying from its harvest lows as farmers have stopped selling with the futures market slide.
Row crop markets had a rough Friday morning but rallied into the afternoon. Old crop corn closed 12 cents above its morning lows and new crop corn 8 cents higher than early lows. New crop KC wheat ended an eight-day losing streak, closing up 9 cents on the day and 12 cents off its low.
Forecast:
Spotty rains have fallen across Nebraska and western Iowa the last 24 hours. Totals coming in anywhere from a trace to .80” with a majority being on the lower end of that range.
7-day forecast for the western corn belt has some outside chances of precipitation with temps on the warmer side of normal. Any precip will likely be welcomed even as planters start to roll heavier next week. The updated drought monitor isn’t looking friendly as the “Exceptional” & “Extreme” categories have captured a few more counties.
Economy:
Another bank is in the cross hairs of insolvency and FDIC receivership. Shares of First Republic Bank are down over 95% since early February. This is another regional bank with a high southern California focus. Recently, 11 large banks deposited $30 billion in the bank to maintain operations. The bank has had a 40% drop in deposits on continued fallout from the Silicon Valley Bank failure.
Exxon reported a quarterly profit of $11.4 billion. This is the highest quarterly profit in company history.
The median U.S. home price fell 3.3% in March to $400,528, which is the largest year-over-year decrease since 2012. Average rent rates also fell in March for the first time since 2020. Pending home sales were reported -5.2% month over month, compared to market expectations of 0.8%
The next FED meeting is next week, and the market is currently pricing in a 80% probability of a 10th consecutive rate hike. This would push the prime interest rate from 8.0% to 8.25% as analysts say there is too much spending in the pipeline for the FED to do nothing. The 3-Month Treasury Bill yield is 5.15% compared to one year ago when the yield was 0.79% and two years ago just 0.02%.
Something that probably means nothing:
Investors own 10% of homes currently for sale in the US.
