Soybean prices are slightly higher this morning, but similar to corn, overall prices are down about -15% in the past 30-days and down about -4% in the past 52-weeks.
Bulls are talking about weather complications in a few key production areas here in the U.S. We've had the talks circulating for a few weeks about selected dry areas, but as of late there seems to be more talk of overly wet conditions in some key areas. In fact, it feels like some insiders are starting to slightly walk-back their U.S. yield forecasts, perhaps from 49 to 50 bushels per acre, down to something more like 48 to 49 bushels per acre. Not a huge step-back in production, but nonetheless a step in that direction.
Bears continue to focus on trade uncertainties involving the worlds #1 buyer of soybeans. From what I'm hearing, there's still over +1.25 million bushels of old-crop U.S. soybeans marked as "sold" to China but have still not "shipped". On top of that, there almost another 2.0 million bushels of old-crop marked as sold to "unknown" that has still not shipped. The question now is how many of these +3.0 million old-crop bushels will be "canceled" altogether and or how many of these old-crop sales will be rolled forward?
Some bulls are saying if U.S. soybeans continue to depreciate in value compared to Brazilian soybeans, we might soon see Chinese importers become buyers despite the 25% tariff. Meaning our supply has become that much cheaper than the rest of the available supply in the world. Hard to believe we could soon pencil even with the tariff implications
The trade seems to have all eyes on the July 6th deadline when Chinese tariffs on U.S. soybeans will supposedly go into effect. As a spec, I'm still not interested in being an outright bull or buyer of this market, at least not yet. That just seems like the obvious or too easy of a play. I can't get myself to initiate a bearish position down here either, so that puts me on the sideline, staying patient.
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