Outside of Krampus, that mythological creature from German folklore who is supposed to round up all the bad children at Christmas, I cannot imagine anyone else who might have had this on their Christmas list. A variant of COVID-19 has been detected in Britain, which has prompted many other nations to close the borders with the island and has set off a few shock waves in markets, particularly equities. From what I have read, this variant is no more deadly than the original, is probably already in a number of different countries, and according to modeling data, may be more contagious, which is hard to imagine considering how rapidly the original seemed to spread. Nevertheless, the news created renewed concerns for the shutdown of trade around the world. Incidentally, in addition to the selloff in the equities, the news sent people scampering into the perceived safety of the U.S. Dollar, where we have witnessed one of the strongest single-day advances in months.
Of course, the surprise here is that most were expecting a bump up in equity values this morning, seeing that Congress did actually come to an agreement over the weekend for the next stimulus package. Granted, many expected that would be the case, so the news may have been a bit anti-climatic anyway. Included in this $900 billion package will be one time checks of $600 per person in a household that makes up to $75,000 annually, a boost of $300 per week in unemployment benefits for the next 11 weeks, additional money for small business and schools as well as additional money to facilitate nationwide vaccinations.
There is not a tremendous amount of ag specific news around this morning. Rains in South America remain sporadic, but enough continues to fall here and there to provide relief and hopes for developing crops. Russia has now announced that they will be imposing tariffs on soybeans and scrap metals to ensure sufficient domestic supplies. And finally, China reports that the pig herd grew by 29.8% year over year during the month of November.
During the week ending December 15th, large specs grew less enamored with corn but fonder of just about everything else. They sold 14,526 contracts of corn but purchased over 10,000 Chicago wheat, 6,600 KC, almost 4,000 contracts of beans, nearly 14,000 meal, and almost 11,000 bean oil.
Finally, today is the Winter Solstice, marking the official start of winter and the transition to a bit more sunlight each day for the next six months. Making this year a bit more unique, though, is the Great Conjunction, where Jupiter and Saturn will be so close together, they will appear as one very bright star and is referred to as the Christmas Star. It will culminate this evening, and the last time these two planets were this close was almost 400 years ago, and the last time it was visible at night in the Northern Hemisphere was around 800 years ago. It sounds like one of those events it is worth bundling up and going outside to see.
