Wednesday March 13, 2024

• Yesterday soybean futures posted their best close in a month, gaining nearly 17 cents to close at $11.96 and the most heavily traded May24 contract. Helping this rally was a CONAB report, providing a lower than expected soybean production estimate paired with short coverings. 
• CONAB has lowered their soybean estimates by 3mmt to 143.9mmt from last months estimates, last season estimates sat higher at 154.6mmt. The Brazilian Safrina corn crop estimated at 87.348mmt down from 88.095mmt, and wheat was reduced from 10.2 to 9.6mmt. 
• Russia’s central bank shows that 40% of exports and 38.5% of imports were transacted in the Chinese yuan. BRICS have been working on using the yuan as the standard currency for transition, though there is still large gaps in dominate currencies. 
• Ukrainian sea exports down 20% from February, grain sea exports pegged 2.2mmt vs 2.4mmt from this time last month.
• Brazilian soybean export sales are up, pegged at 13.71 million tonnes this month, overall sales on the years are estimated at 36.6% vs the historical average of 50.1%. 
• The February consumer price index (CPI) showed inflation rising to 3.2%, this would take out most volatility of energy and food prices that rose faster than expected.