Market Analysis with Matt Bennett

Yeager: Sanctions against Russia over oil boosted much of the grain market late week in what has been mostly three lower days of losses in the cattle complex. 

For the week… 

The nearby wheat contract added nine cents and the December corn contract gained a penny. Hope returned to the soy complex on the prospects of results from a meeting next week between presidents Trump and Xi. The November soybean contract put on 22 cents, while December meal improved $13.10 per ton. December cotton contracted by 8 cents per hundredweight. Over in the dairy parlor, November Class Three milk futures strengthened by $1.19. The livestock market was lower. December cattle sold off $7.90. November feeders cut $19.50 and the December lean hog contract weakened 48 cents. In the currency markets, the U.S. dollar index was higher by 50 ticks. November crude oil added $4.51 per barrel. COMEX gold lost $103.60 per ounce, and the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index was up more than 22  points to settle at 561 - 55.  Joining us now to lend us his insight on these and other trends is regular market analyst Matt Bennett. Hello, Matt.

Bennett: Hello, Paul.

Yeager: So many places to start. The obvious one to me is livestock. What does this. You know what? I'm just going to let William s question, I think lead us off because this is what so many people wanted to know. Matt, was William's question of what's going to happen with cattle prices if they import Argentina beef.

Bennett: Argentina beef in and of itself is not going to be the catalyst for the cattle market falling apart in my opinion. If you take up to 80,000 tons, which is what the proposal is, basically you're going to raise our imports less than 1%. I mean, it's not going to be a huge amount. I think the overriding thing is if you're doing that and you say, hey, we're going to lower beef prices, then if that's not enough and people say, hey, we're not sure that that's enough, then what else might happen on the back side of that? One of my bigger concerns there's several of them. One of my bigger concerns is, you know, there is a meeting this next week. Mexico is going to come talk to Secretary Rollins about potentially reopening the border. And this is less than a month after we had a screw worm incident 70 miles from the border. Are we going to open the border too soon? In an effort to lower beef prices? That's out of my realm. It's above my pay grade, but it certainly does not look good to me. If that is what indeed happens. And I sure hope that we are being as cautious as absolutely possible.

Yeager: Do you have any? I don't know if it's optimism, but it's not meeting with Mexico's presidents, not meeting with the U.S. president because our U.S. president is going to be on an even bigger trip, one of the biggest ever. For when it comes to our relationship with China, we're meeting with, I think, South Korea and Japan and then China. That's quite the trifecta. Which of those two meetings has the biggest impact for us next week in agriculture?

Bennett: I think clearly it depends on which side of the fence you're on, so to speak. Obviously, the rancher is not optimistic. Whenever they think that these cattle are going to move north again, especially with the concerns that it causes, you know, phytosanitary concerns. But clearly agriculture is waiting on the heels to see, hey, are we going to come up with a trade deal? I mean, if you look at export inspections this last week for soybeans, they were fantastic. And that is with the presumption that most of us feel pretty confident in saying China has a bunch of beans yet, right? If there was a time for them to buy beans and they could do it under the radar, I think they'd be, you know, this would be the time to do.

Yeager: Is it because of the government shutdown.

Bennett: Yeah. We don't know any sort of surprise announcements in the morning. Like, you know, we typically get we're getting inspections. It's not saying, you know, exactly where these are all going to. So I would say the bigger one of course is going to be, you know, meeting with with China.

Yeager: So let's stick with soybeans then, because is that the reason for the rally this week is the optimism, the hope.

Bennett: Oh yeah. I mean, absolutely. I think that that's got a lot to do with the optimism. I mean, to me it's you know, you're right here in the thick of harvest. I mean, well, we're on the backside as far as soybeans go, but clearly there's a lot of beans in the countryside. And typically this isn't the time of year that we're going to set in on some sort of a rally effort. We know the bean crop is decent. It's pretty darn good. I mean, I don't know that it's exactly what the USDA said. You know, we don't I don't even if we're going to get a November report to find out. But bottom line is it's a big crop. It's a big crop overall. Acres weren't huge. But yield I think, is pretty darn good. I've got to think that people are saying, hey, if they are going to meet, because this has been an on again, off again deal, if they are going to meet, maybe there's something in the works already, you know? Right. You would think that if there's optimism they're going to go ahead and meet. If they think it's a waste of time, someone's going to call it off.

Yeager: Let's stick with the president. But his impact on the wheat market, because the sanctions against Russia over crude impacted a couple of things. The crude oil market, the corn market, but specifically in the wheat market. What did those sanctions mean?

Bennett: Well, I mean, ultimately, it there's some talk that maybe China actually bought some wheat off of us as well. I mean, clearly whenever you have those sanctions, you know, India is kind of backing away. It sounds like from crude oil purchases, China's backing away a little bit from crude oil purchases off of Russia. A whole lot of good things happening. Any time that we see a rally in the market, it's good for us, especially corn and beans, not so much wheat. But, you know, we're growing energy. We know that, right? And so whenever we look at the wheat market overall, though, clearly if there's sanctions in place, if people are already a little hesitant to do business with Russia, I mean, you know, we know that. But, you know, U.S. wheat exports might be halfway decent if we continue to see these sort of sanctions efforts go on.

Yeager: And the fact that we've been at ridiculous lows for quite a while.

Bennett: Oh, I mean, the wheat market can't catch a break. I mean, it's just been as pathetic as the market could possibly be. And so any sort of good news whatsoever there would be good. I mean, one thing I'd like to see this last week was, from a weather standpoint, a soft red crop got a little drink in my part of the world. We hadn't had rain in 1011 weeks. And some of those folks that were sown, wheat said. I don't know if my wheat is going to come up. Well, now, you know, after a couple inches of rain, it it definitely is going to make them feel a little bit better tonight.

Yeager: Do you feel better about corn yet?

Bennett: Well, the corn market acts like it doesn't want to go down a whole lot. But anytime you get to this for 25 four, 30 level, it just gets stopped dead in its tracks. And so it's no secret that a lot of folks across the Midwest, I states in general, $4 corn is associated with four and a 3:45 30. Right. And so in our part of the world where harvest is winding down, you're seeing bases, pops that are pretty interesting. And I think it's a variety of things. People say, oh, the crops not there. I think the crop is smaller than USDA. I feel pretty confident in saying that. I'm going to say, you know, low to mid one 80s, maybe 181, 182 right now is about where my head would be. But I don't think that this base improvement has as much to do with crop size as what it does. People are bagging corn, people are putting corn everywhere. They possibly can put it put it in sheds. I mean, I've heard of guys doing things because they've seen the carry in the market. They're going to want it more than what they do right now. Right. And we've already seen some of this basis actually come to us. And so I talked to a guy this week that heard me on a, on a podcast talk about baggers, and he said he went to try to find a bagger in late August. And he said there wasn't one in North America he could buy.

Yeager: So does a bag tell you that the farmer is thinking, I can ride this out from 1 to 3 months versus three months to a year on what I would put into a bin. So they have optimism.

Bennett: I feel like a couple of things. I mean, like when you look at, for instance, like basis, for instance, and I'm going to talk beans real quick basis. August 1st, Saint Louis, if you would have looked at their cash price, if you just had beans to sell December 1st instead of August 1st, 60 cent difference in corn wasn't as phenomenal as that. But clearly we're selling more bushels of corn. And so what we've seen is, is that most of these guys are like, I'm not going to sell to white basis during fall. I'm going to I'm going to hold on to this thing, wait till basis comes to us. A lot of people have last year in the back of their mind, they think that, hey, we're going to I mean, spreads are acting like they did last year, you know, spreads tightened up this week and they're acting like they did last year. So some people are of the opinion that we might get into this January report and find out the crop wasn't as big or substantially smaller than what we had thought before. Now I'm not in the camp that it's going to be substantially smaller, and I do think there's offsets there. And I know you and I have talked about that before. They're going to lower demand if they bring down production, because it's probably artificially inflated already.

Yeager: Well, we have a couple of questions about the government. The shutdown impact on the report, but I guess give me a broader sense. We're going to get data eventually. But how accurate will that data be? How much can we depend? Because if it's looking like the same of last year, how do we know if it will be? How do we know to act in that?

Bennett: That's a very tough question, Paul, and I'm afraid that the way that this will play out with all of this corn being on the farm, so to speak, bags, you name it, that this could be a long tail type situation, whereas you pop up maybe maybe you do get a little bit of a pop above for 34, 33, for 35. I don't know what it is, but I don't expect a lot more than that for the time being because there's plenty of corn around. People are going to reward that. People are going to be picking bags up as soon as the ground freezes. I think guys are going to go out there and gals are going to go out there and they're going to be picking corn up. And I think that you'll reward the market. It's going to make it. A lot of hedge pressure is going to make it really tough to substantially go higher.

Yeager: Right? Right. Because the bag is, is is giving a sign to those in town.

Bennett: Exactly.

Yeager: I'm not going to hold this forever.

Bennett: Exactly. I mean, you know, if it's in a ban, obviously you got air on it. There's all kinds of things you can do. You certainly can't hold that bag until it gets hot outside. Right? You know, I mean, but yeah, you're right.

Yeager: All right. Let's go back to livestock then. If we could for a minute prior to the post, we had kind of we had rallied back from what we sold off last week. Is it the normal pressures and is there anything normal anymore about this livestock market? 

Bennett: No. There's not much normal. I think there's a few things going on here. Paul. Whenever the post about Argentina certainly frustrated people. Okay. But at the same time, I think we all know that fundamentally it's not going to change a whole lot. I think the more frustrating post was when he said that he was the person responsible for the cattle market moving higher, and Paul, any of these ranchers that have gone out of business because they couldn't sustain the margins, I mean, the last ten years have been catastrophic other than the last 2 to 3. Right? And so some of these guys that have been involved in drought the last three years, they couldn't keep heifers if they wanted to. So they were going on the feedlot. Meanwhile, the herd size is shrinking to 70 year low. He had nothing absolutely nothing to do with this cattle market rally and to put a post out that was as tone deaf as what that was. That's what angered people more than anything.

Yeager: And to think and go back to the numbers that you said, what we would get from Argentina isn't going to flood the market. I mean, I saw one report said it'd be your Big Mac might cost a dime less.

Bennett: Well, and you got to understand. Like what? What are we going to get? Like, what are the cuts we're going to get? Typically not the higher quality cuts. And so M-Cool is an absolute necessity in my opinion. We got to have a country of origin labeling so people know what they're buying. I mean, if you go to a steakhouse tonight in downtown Des Moines, Paul, you're going to have to have a reservation. You know, that it's going to be standing room only. And it's been like that for quite some time. The consumer is not backed away from beef. All right. Beef is high relative to what it was. But let's compare it to processed foods. You know, and there's more protein here. I mean, of course I'm a big proponent of beef. But bottom line is you're getting a heck of a lot more. And it's not that high as compared to some of your other foods.

Yeager: So then why the hog market? Why is that struggling?

Bennett: In my opinion, cattle market comes down. You're probably I think I feel like the cattle market is kind of propped the hog market. Of course you got substitution effect there and cattle market pulls back. And I think that's what you're going to see is that the hog market's going to pull back somewhat as well. I mean, in my opinion overall, I mean, if I look at cattle, for instance, cut out values, you look at, for instance, the cash market, everything is still fairly well intact. And you've got to think that if we don't see substantial change next week, like opening the border, we might see this market actually come right back. And if it does, I think hog market come with it.

Yeager: Let's close with crude and gold as indicators in their rise and sell off respectively.

Bennett: Yeah. I mean when you look at when you look at crude, I mean obviously this whole sanction thing, it's positive for crude oil prices. But you know, OPEC has been very reluctant to scale back on any production whatsoever. Ethanol numbers this week were awfully good for, for corn. I mean huge increase. And I think that's got something to do with the fact that Cruz rallying and and draw down stocks was huge as far as gold is concerned. I mean, it has it gone too high for the time being? I don't know. But I do think whenever we said, hey, we're going to we're China's not going to allow us in this metal situation. Essentially, I think a lot of people were racing to get a hold of any metals they could get. You look at gold, you look at silver, you look at palladium. I mean, silver broke $50 for the first time. Now, you know, it kind of settled just under 50. But there's still a lot of people that are racing to some sort of an asset that they can hold on to. And I don't know that that's quite over with yet. There's just too much unsettlement in the world right now.

Yeager: Which means we need to keep having a conversation, just not right now.

Bennett: Absolutely.

Yeager: All right. Matt Bennett, thank you so much. Appreciate your time and your insight. Well, a whole slew of questions for you here in just a minute. Thank you. You've been watching the analysis segment and in a moment we will continue our discussion in an online only segment that we call Market Plus. So here's how you do it. You search Market Plus with Matt Bennett wherever you get your podcast to hear that conversation. Or you can go to our website of Markettomarket.org. Each Monday morning. We are in your inbox with the Market Insider newsletter. They are behind the scenes stories and the next episode will include the story of what happened Friday morning here on the program and behind the scenes there. That forced a big change into what you just saw here on the TV show. Subscribe at Markettomarket.org to be in the know. Also want to let you know before we go. It was 50 years ago that this show began. That's what we were going to tell you a little bit about. We'll tell you about that soon. So you have to read the newsletter for the full story. But next week we're going to wrap up the competition for bragging rights in the world of the giant pumpkin. Thank you so much for watching. Have a great week.

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