I’ve been to a few different marketing training sessions over the years but one of the first ones I went to hammered home a very valid point which springs to mind this morning. You can do all the S&D work and weather watching you like but if politics get involved in a market anything can happen. Thank you China and America for proving to me that this is still a very valid point 20 years later.
This year we’ve had India kill a pulse market but when China announced a 178.6% “deposit” being required by US companies wishing to export sorghum to China it took things to a whole new level.

While looking at US futures values one might think that the markets there had missed this snippet of news from China and are merrily trading as per usual. Wheat, after spending time overbought has been sold back down to a little oversold and is attempting to test a more neutral position after a slight rally. The 4 – 7 day rainfall map in the states looks as good or better  than yesterday and temperatures should start to resemble more seasonal numbers by this time next week. Warmer weather should also see corn sowing pickup.

Tunisia picked up 125kt of soft wheat and 25kt of feed barley. The lowest offers, CFR, came in at US$217.85 for the wheat and US$229.69 for the feed barley. Although the contracts are optional origin most expected to see EU product on the boats. These values are not terribly different to recent tender business.