Confirmation that US soybean sales set a marketing year high last week of 2.83mt. Additional soybean sales were also reported overnight, with volume of around 560kt. What would you expect US soybean futures to do, well fall of course. The punters decided to sell on the back of a better weather outlook across S.America.
Recent weeks had seen as little as 40% of average rainfall for parts of Brazil. This had the punters starting to think production could be a little under the current USDA estimate of 122mt. Some reports suggest Brazil has sown more than 36mha of soybeans this year, it’s 12th consecutive year of growth.
Maybe the real weakness in soybeans came from outside markets. Crude oil fell 5% overnight setting a one year low as Wall St gets onto the back foot. With increasing interest rates in the US and the talk of more to come investors pulled out of US stocks. Further weakness is expected to see liquidation of speculative longs in most commodities in the coming weeks. Maybe those at the top of the food chain will get this recession they are so eager to convince us we need in 2019.

Wheat futures bucked the trend in soybeans and corn but didn’t manage to set the world on fire either. USDA announced a very subdued 312kt of new weekly sales, which is about half of the target required to meet USDA projections.
Tunisia issued a tender for 90kt of durum that will close today. Shipment April / May 2019.