Grains remain firm on Brazil dryness and the U.S.- China trade talks early positives. Not only did the Chinese offer an olive branch for buying U.S. rice for the first time in history they showed good-faith with Chinese importers buying 3 cargoes of U.S. soybeans on Monday or 180,000 tonnes. On the corn front in the overnight electronic session, the March Corn is currently trading at 383 ½ which is 1 ¼ of a cent higher. The trading range has been 384 to 382 ¼.
On the ethanol front there were no trades posted in the overnight electronic session. The February contract settled at 1.284 and is currently showing 1 bid at 1.301 and 5 offers at 1.300 with Open Interest dropping to 1,895 contracts.
On the crude oil front, we have the weekly API Energy Stocks data scheduled to be released at 3:30 P.M. release. The market is finally realizing that OPEC cuts, capital spending cuts and sanctions on Iran are on the way. Trade war aside, if the two largest economies in the world are not looking for a slowdown and if the U.S.-Sino talks continue to make progress so we will see the Stock Market and basket of commodities markets will fly to the upside while emerging markets and healthy economies around the world will have an uncontrollable thirst for oil and there will be shortages that will drive prices higher in the black gold market. In the overnight electronic session, the February crude oil is currently trading at 4920 which is 68 points higher. The trading range has been 4945 to 4831.
On the natural gas front we had a selloff steak broken in the overnight electronic session. Leaving work yesterday at 4 P.M. I saw something new and different, the sun, and also temperatures near 60 degrees which felt like a beautiful spring afternoon. However, today we will go back to typical January weather and have snow Friday night into Saturday with the mercury dropping. In the overnight electronic session, the February Natural Gas is currently trading at 2.999 which 5 ½ cents higher. The trading range has been 3.030 to 2.948.