Japanese nuclear meltdowns? Who cares?
The Arab world revolting and rebelling? Whatever . . .
All the ag markets care about today is the USDA prospective plantings report, and about an hour from now the Chicago market opens, so we’ll see where we go from here.
The report does not contain any shockers. Slightly more corn acres than expected. Slightly more wheat. Slightly less soybeans. About what most expected for total crops acreage. Nothing that radically changes the equation. Ditto for the quarterly stocks report.
So where do we go from here? The last few weeks of the “battle for acres” are upon us, and any attempt of the gods of marketplace to drive farmers towards favouring one crop and away from another needs to be undertaken very soon.
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As well all know, the crop futures markets have been sharply down in the last month. They have stabilized recently. For the past few days they have been treading water as traders awaited this report.
So perhaps another move in some direction is upon us. Let’s hope it’s another leg up in what’s been a long-lasting bull market in crops. The recent sell-off doesn’t yet seem to have been more than a correction. Stick the recent weeks on a one or two year chart and it doesn’t look like a trend reversal, although if it gets a bit more downish it would be looking that way.
So where we go from here is crucial. Let’s watch the markets today to see what they say about what this means.
