- Chicago grains closed lower whilst soybeans saw modest gains and soybean meal closed either side of unchanged.
- The biggest news today has probably been the reduction in floor price for Indian wheat exports to $260/mt (plus taxes) making Indian wheat competitive in the global market place. Price aside, the only other issue is one of which destination will accept wheat from India, but that is an ongoing issue and is unlikely to change in the short term. CBOT prices closed as much as 1% lower on, or close to today’s session lows. Prices have not seen these levels for the last month (basis Dec ’13 contract).
- Brazil, just to temper the bears, added a further 600,000 mt of non-Mercosur imports – tariff-free – bringing the total to over 3 million mt and placing likely origin as US or Canada.
- In other global wheat news today, we saw the reuters forecasting arm report their estimate for Australian 2013/14 output at 25.29 million mt, an increase from 24.82 million mt a month ago. New South Wales’ reduced yield and output were said to be offset by improved prospects in S Australian Victoria and W Australia.
- Tomorrow’s US export sales numbers, which are anticipated to be large and will include updates covering the period of US government shutdown, are the immediate focus for many, which is possibly why we have not seen much in the way of significant price moves. Should the export figures surprise to the upside and the market rally, we would agree with others that this will provide a further selling opportunity ahead of the 8th November crop report which we would expect to reflect the better than anticipated yields being reported on both soybean and corn.
- Clearly we continue to live in an extremely dynamic and interesting world, seemingly hell-bent on challenging us poor traders and analysts!