GRAINS:
Grain markets Monday followed up Friday’s selloff with another red day, this time led lower by outside pressure as crude oil futures suffered near 5.5% losses on the day following Israel’s missile attack on Iran Friday deliberately avoided oil production infrastructure. It is somewhat of a convoluted price reaction as Middle Eastern tensions seem to be escalating, but the market is viewing this as a clear message that oil production is not an Israeli military target. U.S. harvest will essentially be completed over the next 7 to 10 days, and Brazilian planting is also racing toward completion, adding to downward pressure on prices as the market will try to make sense of likely large surpluses of grain supplies over the next crop year. December corn closed down 4 1/2 cents and March corn was down 4 3/4 cents. January soybeans closed down 11 1/2 cents and March soybeans were down 10 3/4 cents. December KC wheat closed down 10 1/2 cents, December Chicago wheat was down 10 1/4 cents and December Minneapolis wheat was down 10 cents.
LIVESTOCK:
The live cattle complex seems to be caught in a holding mindset through Monday’s trade as the market hopes to find continued fundamental support this week but won’t likely find the answers it hopes for until later in the week when the cash cattle market trades and until packers have a better understanding of what consumer demand is going to amount to last week. Thankfully, fundamental demand was ample last week as cash prices traded $2.00 higher, boxed beef prices saw consistent support and the week’s slaughter was aggressive compared to weeks past at 623,000 head. The other factor that may be slightly hindering the live cattle complex is that Friday’s Cattle on Feed report showed that on-feed numbers were steady with last year — but it’s likely traders don’t spend much time fretting over that report as thankfully other market fundamentals are strong and continue to be encouraging. With tremendous support from consumers, the lean hog complex, yet again, with a rally into Monday’s close. What’s interesting about the pork cutout report from this morning, is that substantial gains are currently being seen across the vast majority of the cuts, which indicates that consumer demand is widespread.
