(The Crop Site) – US – The outside and macro markets aided the slide in commodities last week.
The Dow was down 227.08 last week to close at 12,588.31 as of Friday. Oil was up 28 cents a barrel as of this writing to settle at $86.50. Gold was down $18 an ounce while the dollar index slightly higher on the week. The grains bounced off of support today with corn positive on the week, while soybeans and wheat have lost.
The weekly ethanol numbers showed production down 3,000 barrels per day to 824,000 barrels per day (-0.36% from last week and -9.55% from last year) and stocks down 285,000 barrels to 17.850 million barrels (-1.57% from last week and +8.64% from last year). Even though stocks are much larger than last year at the same time, they are at the lowest point since late last December.
Also making headlines, Ukraine’s Agricultural Minister has dropped December 1 as the date for curbing Ukrainian exports. A new target date has not been set which implies that action could be taken anytime in the near future or immediately upon reaching the 5.5 million metric ton threshold to curtail exports.
Previously in August, the Ag Minister originally stated that exports will be voluntarily curbed at about 4 million metric tons. That was later revised higher to a 5.5 million metric ton cap.
As of November 12th, Ukraine has exported 4.78 million metric tons with an additional 617,000 metric tons ready for shipment, leaving them with only 103,000 metric tons under the cap. Wheat held a bit of a bid with this news out of Ukraine early in Thursday’s session, but fell late as soybeans led to the downside.
Speaking of soybeans, both producers and traders of the oilseed are focusing on the weather situation which did improved this week for Brazil and Argentina. Both still lag far behind on their respective planting paces, however.
Private analyst Celeres out of Brazil reported Monday that 37% of the soybean planting is complete in Brazil compared with 27% last week and 48% last year. Argentina was only 3.6% planted versus 10% normally for this time of year.
This is important to keep track of as a large crop is needed out of South America to boost global ending stocks that are running pretty tight. Also, Argentina’s Agricultural Ministry reported expectations of about 19.4 million hectares are to be planted to soybeans compared with 18.7 million last year.
Looking at this week, trade should have light volume due to the Thanksgiving holiday. The markets will be closed that day, but do not be surprised if we continue to rebound next week. Also, Cattle on Feed report came out after the bell today.
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