Trading remains quiet on the domestic grain market with sellers and buyers shy in the market. However, towards the end of last week we did see barley edging over wheat again as it gained €1 on pre-Christmas and €3 post-Christmas prices.
Internationally, markets have softened in recent days as the lack of any supportive news allowed markets to drift lower. In the absence of major news, markets are currently been driven by technical levels.
Since September, the major wheat indices have generally traded between two major technical levels. The MATIF Dec 18 has traded in the range €200 to €205/t while the CBOT Dec 18 is ranging from $5.00 to $5.30 per bushel. These ranges will probably hold for the short term until some significant news causes prices to breakout to the low or high side. Because consumption currently exceeds supply on a world scale and, the likely hood of a reduction in the pace of Russian exports, many market commentators expect that we could see a breakout to the upside.
Despite good yields from the US harvest corn prices have held surprisingly firm. Since July, CBOT December corn has ranged from $3.40 to $3.80 per bushel and is currently at the higher end of this range at around the $3.70 mark which is providing support to the wheat market also.
Soybeans continue to trade at 10 year lows due to US trade dispute with China and increased production in the US and Brazil in particular. The CBOT November is currently trading around the $8.57 a bushel mark.
There were no major weather issues to report this week with better weather in the US and Canada allowing significant progress to made in the harvest.
