It would appear that the bull family was just too anxious to wait and decided to rip open all of their Christmas gifts this morning. Each had requested of Santa, additional rally in the grain and soy markets and were delighted to see he had delivered. However, let’s keep in mind that often times after the adrenaline rush from all the gifts begins to taper, it leaves children and adults alike susceptible to a case of the post-holiday blues.
While not technically an “official” number, Aprosoja, the Brazilian grain grower association, cut their estimate for the current soy crop by 2 MMT, taking it down to 127 MMT. Keep in mind that they were already below the USDA estimate of 133 but began the crop season with a projected estimate of 134.5.
Great Britain released its final crop estimates for the year and did a little more trimming. The final estimate for wheat came through at 9.66 MMT, which would be down 40.5% from the previous year and was down almost 5% from their October estimate. Barley production was trimmed slightly from the last estimate, coming through at 8.12 MMT, and rapeseed was pegged at 1.04 MMT, down 40.8% from a year ago.
It was expected that export sales would slump a bit last week and slump they did. For the week ending December 17th, corn sales recorded a marketing-year low of 651,100 MT or 25.6 million bushels. This was a drop of 66% from the previous week and was 59% under the 4-week average. On the top of the list were sales of 181.6k MT to unknown destinations, followed by 99.8k to Guatemala and then 87.2k to Japan. Beans also set another new low watermark for the marketing year with sales of just 352,800 MT or 12.9 million bushels. China actually purchased 526.4k MT, followed by the Netherlands in for 139k and Egypt taking 95.7k, but there were reductions of 791.3k MT from unknown destinations. While not a new low for the marketing year, wheat sales dropped 27% from the previous week coming in at 393,700 MT or 14.5 million bushels. Nigeria was the best buyer with 102k MT, followed by Mexico at 70.2k and then Indonesia with 60k. Looking through the balance of the list, we find China buying 64.4k MT of sorghum, 185.6k RNB of cotton, 168,900 whole cattle hides, 2,500 MT of beef (mostly 2021), which was technically to Hong Kong, and in pork a decrease of 6,100 MT for 2020 but an increase of 7,700 MT for 2021. It is worth pointing out that in November, China imported a total of 330,000 MT of pork, which was 44% higher than the previous year.
Weekly export sales were not the only report to get the early release treatment this week, as the initial unemployed claims were also moved up a day. For the week ending the 19th, 803,000 people filed new claims, which improved 89,000 over the previous week. Also, this morning, the University of Michigan released several consumer sentiment reports. December Sentiment came in at 80.7, versus an expected 81, December current conditions at 90, versus a preliminary 91.8, and December expectations of 74.6, compared to the preliminary 74.7. Finally, new home sales in November dropped 11% to 841,000 versus the expected .9% decrease.
