Market Perspective

The weather market has begun in earnest. Over the last month the futures have had quite a few twenty cent trading sessions. Some has been due to the continuing confrontation between Russia and the Ukraine, but most of it has been due to weather forecasts and the USDA Crop Progress Reports which have started to come out every Monday afternoon.

The latest Crop Progress Report showed the overall U.S. winter wheat crop rated at 34% good to excellent and 33% poor to very poor, about the same as last week and about the same as a year ago. Overall, the U.S. wheat crop is not in very good shape, which...