There’s not a lot of green on the screen this morning. Most US and EU futures are lower bar Paris corn and Winnipeg canola. NYMEX crude oil and Brent are both firmer. Nothing really fell out of bed, but the weaker closes are compounding losses from the previous session.

Hard red winter wheat out of the US Pacific Northwest was lower. The change in the day to day conversion to AUD XF LPP equivalent price is roughly AUD$0.12/t lower. Like yesterday, the weaker AUD appears to be countering much of the weakness this morning. The conversion comparison for spring wheat is back a couple of bucks and French milling wheat is sharply lower in AUD/t. Paris milling wheat futures fell E2.50/t in both the Dec and March slots.

US weekly wheat export sales were rubbish, just 267,553kt. The trade were expecting to see a number between 350kt and 600kt instead they were fed the 4th lowest weekly export sales total for the current marketing year. US wheat simply is not finding the homes the punters expected it too now that the flow of grain out of the Black Sea is more than halved. To date the winners are probably Bulgaria and Romania. Logistically it would be impossible for them the make up the entire difference left by the absence of Russia and Ukraine. Combining the flow from ROM /BLG and the competitive values for wheat out of Europe and the importers don’t appear to have a lot to worry about………right now.
So what about the future, that’s what “futures” market are supposed to indicate. HRWW futures have a carry of 17c/bu (AUD$8.92/t) between Dec26 and March 27 contracts. That’s not exactly saying importers and going to have a mad scramble early next year is it. Time will tell if this is the buy of the year, or the punters are right, and the major exporters should be meeting the market now and clearing grain before this whole kerfuffle between Russia and Ukraine blows over. Am I convinced this is about to blow over, yeah nah, this is not going to end nicely with Putin and Zelensky having a beer at the local any time soon.