Monday Market Briefing - 24th January 2022

I’m a genius! We called the market to be flat and sideways for each of the last two weeks and here we are, on old crop at least, back at the same values as two Fridays ago. Let’s not dwell on the intervening period where we were £8 lower and then back up again, we just need a new catchy phrase to describe markets that are volatile but lacking real direction. Unexpectedly high US export sales for wheat, published Tuesday, proved the catalyst for the up-swing and thus confirmed there are still plenty of buyers of old crop in the world market with programmes still to complete.

Almost unnoticed, new crop also gained, maintaining the narrower May/Nov spread close to the £20 that was established a week earlier. Concerns about weather patterns in the US wheat belt may have driven new crop on, but these may yet come to be over-shadowed by the reportedly outstanding condition of the much larger Russian Crop - assuming we are not at War by harvest. If we do see any calming of the Ukrainian situation this would be bearish for new crop now. (The possibility of Russian wheat not appearing on the market next season hardly bears thinking about)

So at the risk of boring everyone, it’s hard not to call the market sideways again, it just doesn’t quite know what to do at the moment. Malting barley is now capped by the confirmed news of a 60,000mt Argentinian cargo already loading for Europe. Milling wheat is difficult to call, premiums are still close to season highs, feed grains trading freely but for how much longer will demand continue? The back end of this season will be the preserve of the very brave.

Have a good week.