By: Dan Hueber –
Welcome to the first official full day of summer. Technically the solstice occurred at 11:24 PM CST yesterday but I would be willing to bet that there may have only been a few of you up celebrating the moment. That is probably best left to those interested in pagan festivals that were parading around over at Stonehenge anyway. In years past, I recall the more “folksy” weather observers (better known as old-timers) would maintain that we need to watch the weather pattern on days on either side of the solstice as that would give you a blueprint for the next three months. I certainly cannot verify the accuracy of such a prediction, but if there is any truth to it I pity those living in the Southwest and across much of Europe. I guess the only phenomena that I can say for certain is we should experience more daylight hours today that any other time of the year so weather permitting, hopefully you can be outdoors to enjoy it. Sunsets have been quite striking here for the past few nights.
Corn and bean markets appear to have stabilized and bounced a bit overnight but the recent upside leader of the pack, wheat, is lower. Considering that I see little change in the weather picture in wheat producing region here or in Europe, one has to suspect that the pullback in little more than a wave of long-liquidation. Considering the fact that since April, Minneapolis wheat has advanced 28%, Kansas City 20% and Chicago 14%, and a good portion of this happening during June, bulls could be feeling just a bit weary for the time being. By no means am I ready to suggest that the strength this morning in the corn/beans overnight is a sign that bear has had it fill in those markets just, particularly seeing indicators still headed lower, but as I have pointed out previously, we have done little more than returned to congestion ranges once again.
We have all heard the old adage that the only things certain in life are death and taxes, but I would add to that list government reports. While some of course mean much more than others, we have several coming up in the next week that fall into the “significant” category. On Thursday the 29th, we will see the quarterly Hogs and Pigs estimates and then on the 30th, the quarterly grain stocks and acreage. We should begin seeing survey estimate released over the next few days.
With weather on the forefront of news at this time of year, there is little attention given to the direction of the dollar, which is just as well as there has been little to no direction in this market for the past month or so. The index has slipped back to around the same value that we were trading at election time last year and turned flat. It should be noted that long-term charts would suggest that we have a major peak behind us but it may be some time before we see additional, or at least significant additional downside action. From the spring of 2015 through the fall of 2016 the dollar remained in a range from approximately 100 to 93 and it would not be shocking to see us remain with that same trading range now to at least through the spring of 2018.
