Friday's USDA Report

[farmaholic]

Bullish or Bearish? Errol, Charlie, any other analyst, what do you think?

[bucket]

If the report comes out bearish and drops prices, it seems there may be some demand come in.

That may not immediately drive prices back up, but it lowers an already tight supply.

[charliep]

My thoughts are neutral to slightly bearish but a guess. March is not really a high impact release month - information mostly known with pace of consumption the wild card - boring stuff that doesn't get markets excited. Conditions as northern hemisphere winter wheat comes out dormancy and the US planting intentions report are the next pieces of information I would follow.

I also note the expression buy the rumor and sell the fact. Will be a lot smarter Friday.

[errolanderson]

Grain traders appeared to be willing
sellers today (profit-taking) ahead of the
report.

My ability to second-guess USDA ahead of
the report has been fairly poor. Leaning
toward a neutral report.

Errol

[parsley]

http://money.msn.com/top-stocks/post.aspx?
post=61acf030-1869-4c73-9e8b-06d9f318a99e

[bucket]

Not to offend you, errol, but isn't that part of your job?

[errolanderson]

Hey bucket . . . nothing offends me, getting to be a crusty old guy.

We respect the pre-report trade guesses from the U.S. But USDA has thrown some curveballs at the market at times. So . . . we basically await the numbers and then roll with the report punches.

Bucket, since you want me to do my job . . . here goes.

This report should be mostly neutral with a possible bearish tone (which Charlie mentioned). The South American production impact has been factored into markets. A surprise in the beans may be a smaller or larger-than-expected Brazil bean number.

Wheat ending stocks globally may shrink slightly, but there is still ample supplies. A wheat surprise would be a surprise.

Corn demand numbers may be interesting as there has been a pullback in usuage. USDA is pegging 2012 - 13 corn ending stocks to potentially double from 800 million bu to 1.6 billion bu one year from now. We all know that is a crapshoot number at best.

Hope I redeemed myself slightly.

Errol

[bucket]

errol

That's a pretty good assesment. I am thinking a slight pullback in prices to create some new demand.

[errolanderson]

Thursday morning . . . this is a 'risk
on' day because of Greek bond holder
haircut agreement and solid U.S. job
creation numbers, but grain traders may
be a little trepid heading into
tomorrow's USDA.

Apparently, Russia is discounting new
crop wheat. Also soybeans are
technically very overbought (in our
opinion).

Grain price volatility may pick up over
the next 36 hours.

Errol

[bucket]

There is a lot of talk of feed wheat displacing corn. Has that been accounted for in this report. It seems there was some disagreement among experts/analysts/farmers as to whether the USDA had a handle on that in the last couple of reports.

Also in the last two months farmers from the US have mentioned how fast the corn piles were disappearing for the time of year, an indication of either high usage, or a smaller than expected crop and supports the statement about feed wheat.

[bucket]

Big number on soybean exports today.

How does a trader buy the rumour and then have to buy the fact as well????

China seems to have missed a digit in their corn estimate as well. Maybe the guy lost a marble on his abacus.

Brazil is still trimming its estimates today as well.

Now, throw the weather in the US and Canada into it, better find some more hay for that bull.

[charliep]

Sometimes trading the charts via technical analysis is a lot easier that trying to sift through all the market information/news. What direction is the market moving? Why? Are there key support or resistance areas? As Errol said, markets are never wrong. Just market analysts, traders and farmers who use or analyze them.

Kinda like sorting cattle. Who is more a successful animal handler. Someone who believes they can forecast exactly how an animal will react or someone that admits the animal will do whatever and then prepares themselves to respond accordingly?

[charliep]

Today's numbers to give a reality check. Cuts to South America deeper than expected but I wouldn't look for a big reaction this am. US wheat carryover a little tighter but an increease in the Australian estimate (ABARE number) more than offsetting.

Nothing new to impact the market one way or the other.

[URL="http://www.usda.gov/oce/commodity/wasde/latest.pdf"]USDA March[/URL]