Grains took a breather from yesterday’s sharp selloff to recover a few cents in overnight trade. In outside markets, crude oil dipped lower and equities were trading down on weak employment data this morning.
Yesterday started with strong export sales for soybeans with old-crop of 800,000 MT and new-crop of 443,000 MT, but prices quickly turned lower yesterday as rumors of the Chinese government releasing 5 MMT of soybeans from reserves to auction into the domestic market. If confirmed, the 5 MMT figure is ironically about the magnitude of the crop loss in Argentina that is currently being projected by most analysts.
In wheat, the Kansas wheat tour wrapped up pointing to a bumper Kansas crop in spite of lower acres there. They pegged the state’s crop at 382.4 MB, up from 321.9 MB. In news this morning, Stats Canada pegged all wheat stocks there at 13.8 MMT, in line with analyst expectations going into the report.
Stock markets slid sharply on Friday and the dollar fell after U.S. non-farm payrolls numbers came in well short of forecast, adding to concerns over the pace of economic growth that have weakened investors' appetite for risk globally. Futures prices showed Wall Street set to open as much as half a percent lower while stock markets in Europe deepened morning falls, sending global indices towards their worst weekly losses since early February.
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