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Futures and options trading involves risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone.
🌽 USDA cut its national corn yield to 178.5 bpa (from 180.7) and production to 15.8 billion bushels, close to expectations. 📉 Even so, it's still the second-largest corn crop on record, while corn ending stocks fell to 1.567 billion bushels (stocks-to-use below 10%) and global stocks hit a 12-year low; soybean yield ticked up to 52.8 bpa.
🔥 August CPI rose 0.4% month-over-month and 3.4% year-over-year, right in line with expectations, driven largely by a 3.9% jump in gasoline prices. 📈 Traders now see a nearly 90% chance of a Fed rate hike this week, up sharply from roughly 70% before the report.
💰 Friday's CFTC Commitment of Traders report showed funds net buying 13k corn and 22k soybean contracts, pushing both net longs to record highs (414k corn, 257k soybeans). 📊 Funds sold 10k SRW wheat contracts, but the combined corn/soybean/wheat fund net long hit a record 696k contracts.
🎲 Kalshi is eyeing an expansion into agricultural perpetual futures, aiming to give farmers and traders a new way to gain leveraged exposure to commodity prices. ⛽ The company is also pursuing an oil-linked perpetual tied to WTI crude, with contracts trading 23 hours a day, five days a week.
🌎 Corn export sales came in at 1.9mmt for the new marketing year, beating expectations with Mexico as the top buyer, while soybean sales jumped 35% week-over-week to 2.6mmt led by China. 🌾 Wheat sales hit a marketing-year low of 194,200mt, down 38% from the prior week, with the Philippines as the top buyer.