Morning Highlights

Highlights

• USDA’s December report from Friday: Supply and Demand Recap
• Ag Secretary Vilsack will announce new historic “climate-smart” commodity investments at 12:45pm CT today.
• The last trading day for December grain futures is Wednesday, at noon.
• Outside markets as of 7:00 am CT: Dollar down ..036 at 104.774, Crude Oil down $.04 at $70.98, Dow futures up 68 at 33566 and Gold down $9.70 at $1801.00.

Corn

• USDA reduced corn exports 75mbu in Friday’s report, which increased carryout the same, to 1.257 billion bushels.  Ukraine’s corn crop was reduced 4.5mmt to 27mmt, due to harvest conditions, including 3% of their corn production area being impacted by the conflict.
• Speculative funds sold over 76K corn contracts in the week ending December 6^th, according to the CIT report, leaving them net long only 32,765 contracts.
• There were no deliveries of December corn Friday afternoon.

Outlook: March corn has traded above last week’s high overnight, albeit on low volume trade.

Oilseeds

• Better than expected rains fell in Argentina over the weekend, but the extended forecast is still hot/dry.  Brazil is still showing a favorable forecast.
• USDA left the soybean balance sheet unchanged from last month, but reduced soyoil biofuel use by 200mil lbs, amongst other changes.
• Speculative funds exited 51% of their soyoil long position in the week ending last Tuesday, according to Friday’s CIT report, to a net long 32.8K contracts.
• China’s #2 soybean futures were down 19 cents overnight.  They raised their soybean production estimate 23.7% to 20.3mmt; USDA is currently at 18.4mmt.
• There were no deliveries of December soymeal or soyoil Friday afternoon.

Outlook: Better than expected rain in Argentina and lower Chinese markets have pressured the soy complex overnight.

Wheat

• USDA left our domestic balance sheet unchanged Friday, but lowered Argentina’s wheat crop 3mmt to 12.5mmt, raised Australia’s crop 2.1mmt to a record 36.6mmt and Canada’s crop was lowered 1.2mmt to 33.8mmt.  Total world production was lowered 2.1mmt.
• Australia exported 2.04mmt of wheat in October, up 256tmt from September, according to ABS.  USDA is currently projecting 27.5mmt of exports from Australia this marketing year, up 1.5mmt from last month.
• There were no deliveries in KC, 52 in Chicago and 10 in MPLS.

Outlook: All 3 classes of wheat are showing gains this morning.