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The wheat market must feel like the proverbial teenage boy, who, after thinking the girl of his dreams was going to prom with him, then found out she decided to go with someone else instead.  Last week on the weekly export sales report, wheat recorded a new marketing year high with sales of nearly 677,000 MT, but this week we marked a new marketing year low at just 57,500 MT (2.1 million bushels).  The culprit here was reductions from three different buyers that totaled 142.9k MT.  For new purchases, we found Colombia in for 52.8k MT, followed by Nigeria with 52k and then Haiti purchasing 27k.  Love can be cruel at times.  Corn sales did slip 16% from the previous week but still came in at a respectable 1,175,200 MT or 46.3 million bushels.  Japan was at the top of this list with purchases of 475.3k MT, followed by Mexico taking 210.1k and then Colombia buying 136.1k.  In the daily system, though, we find that China canceled the purchase of 380k MT.   Soybeans sales improved 7% for the week, coming through at 1,095,500 MT or 40.2 million bushels.  Mexico was the top purchaser with 356.6k MT, followed by Egypt, taking 135k, and then the Netherlands purchasing 132k.  This has been one of the few weeks I can recall in some time where China was towards the top of the list.  In fact, the only place they showed up was for the 2022/23 crop year, where they purchased 660k MT.  On a more positive note, soy meal sales set a marketing-year high last week.  In the meat trade, beef sales we decent at 20,100 MT, and pork came in at 30,400.

Very little change in the global weather outlook this morning.  Rain is expected in Paraguay and NE Argentina over the weekend and then possible rains over much of Argentina later next week.  In Brazil, the northern states continue wet, which could hamper bean harvest but should be beneficial for safrinha corn that is being planted.  Winter storms in eastern and southeastern portions of the U.S will continue to create issues in those regions, while the rest of the upper Midwest and plains states will contend with bitter cold for a few more days.

We have a plethora of economic data released this morning.  4th quarter non-farm unit labor costs rose .3% compared with an expected 1% increase.  Non-farm productivity in the 4th quarter rose 6.6% versus the anticipated 4.4%.  Weekly initial jobless claims slipped lower for a second week in a row, dropping 23,000 to 238,000.  This should help ease concerns of an acceleration of omicron-related job losses.

We appear to have primarily negative action in the macros this morning.  Mild pressure in the energies, but solid losses in metals, equities, the dollar, and financial instruments.