Weekly grain report

Byron Behne watches the grain markets for the Odessa Union Warehouse.

10/31/12: Egypt bought Romanian, French and (surprise!) Russian wheat on their overnight tender as the U.S. was skunked again. However our wheat wasn’t nearly as far out of the ballpark as it used to be. Chicago wheat futures rallied on the day but gave back half of their gains by the close. Still no pattern-breaking news. The U.S. winter wheat crop starts out its life in slightly worse condition than last year’s did, which was on the low end of historical condition averages. There’s another USDA supply-and-demand report out at the end of next week to deal with.

11/5/12: Market-moving news is still severely lacking, as grain prices again traded well-worn territory. The weirdest thing has been the fact that soybeans have been the weakest over the past few sessions, despite being the only market with significant export demand recently. Basically the market is looking for soybean supplies to grow on Friday’s supply-and-demand report, while not expecting much in the way of news for corn and wheat. If wheat exports don’t pick up soon, we could be looking at some ending-stock increases coming down the line. Winter wheat emergence continues to be poor in the Northern Plains.