By: Dan Hueber –
I suspect that many of you watched the video posted on twitter yesterday of a Tekamah, Nebraska farmer wakeboarding in a flooded field. In case you missed it, here is the link https://twitter.com/Qconnealy19/status/866006864504291328. While not everyone will attempt to strap on the skis and be pulled across what should be a planted field, this is of course a picture that could be witnessed at a number of locations across the country this year and it would not appear that there will not be a tremendous amount of relief over the next ten days. Of course, if you looked solely at the planting progress report, you would surmise that everything is hunky-dory. Corn planted increased 13%, bringing us to 84% complete, which is exactly where we stood a year ago and is just 1% behind the 5-year average. Even better progress was made in beans as the number increased 21% and currently stand at 53% complete. This is the same pace as last year and 1% ahead of the 5-year average. Of course, these figures do not represent what will need to be replanted or the wet holes that were planted around but it is understandable that bulls found nothing to inspire the troops with this morning. “Alright soldiers, statistically everything looks normal so lets’ rush out there and fight, fight, fight, for higher prices.”
Outside of the looming battle that will undoubtedly ensue once President Trump’s budget proposal is presented today, it would appear that we are a bit light on Ag specific news once again. There was 126,000 MT of beans sales announced to unknown destinations in the daily reports, which is always good to see but hardly a major market mover.
We have continued to witness positive action in the energy markets as crude oil is trying to climb higher now for the third week in a row. Recognize, that along with almost all commodities, at least those that do not go to market on four legs, crude remains in a longer-term sideways pattern.
While there is certainly nothing wrong with that, as I have noted many times in the past, commodities tend to establish bottoms with long drawn out sideways patterns and actually, the more extended they are, the bigger the advance tends to be once it occurs. But for now, we continue to wander through the desert waiting for that leader who will show us the way into the promised land.
