Tuesday Market Briefing - 7th May 2024

Markets looked drifty for most of the week but another strong Friday performance brought us back into slightly positive territory again. The conundrum is that, whilst the World has plenty of grain stocks on paper, most major exporting origins are revising crop forecasts lower for this year as weather issues impact prospects. If there is potentially less new crop material available to buy that’s bound to make everyone nervous in the short term, expect recent gains to be maintained this week.  

At home old crop markets are a bit of a puzzle, the south has stacks of feed wheat hanging around with no obvious home to go to, a seemingly crazy outcome for an importing nation to find itself with, come along to the breakfast meetings in June for a fuller explanation of that one including the implications for future seasons. 

On the other hand we appear to have run out of malting barley frustrating European buyers wanting to top up with old crop. A hefty chunk of the crop that should still have been there has lost germination over the winter, a position that might have been avoided in many cases with better storage. With premiums so high and likely to continue that way, its an expensive error easily avoided by taking up the harvest movement options still on the table.  

Have a good week.