M6 Capital Daily Market Podcast

Daily Market Podcast Jul 24

M6 Capital Mngt

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 10:12
SPEAKER_00

Good morning. This is Chris Myers with M6 Capital Management with our daily market letter on Friday, July 24th. Walking in this morning, December corn is down a penny at 486 and a half. November beans are up a penny at 1244 and three quarters. December Meal is up $1.50 at $3.33 and 40 cents. September crude oil is down $2.30 at $89.90. As far as corn news this morning, not only is the CBU CBOT corn market trying to figure out what the U.S. crop is, but we also had to be dealing with a sharp loss of global wheat production this year. Very strong wheat prices, which have occurred, and very likely a big loss of wheat feeding globally. That only adds to global corn demand. Here are some year-over-year changes in wheat production amongst the largest wheat exporters. These are in millions of tons. In Argentina, we're down seven. In Australia, we're down 12 to 13. In Canada, we're down six. In the EU, we're down 10. In the US, we're down 13 to 14, depending on the size of the spring wheat crop. Russia and Ukraine are pretty much unchanged year over year. So total, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 52 million tons of global production that we lost. That is down 12% from a year ago. Longer term, this means more corn feed demand as you lose wheat feeding, particularly in North Africa, Europe, and Asia. So longer term, this monster global corn demand will push CBOT corn prices higher. I'm convinced of that. Corn exports out of uh Russia and Ukraine and Brazil should remain limited for the foreseeable future. And Argentina can only export so much corn. So that keeps the U.S. corn export demand huge. So now we circle back around to the crop. We have to get past this high, dry weather, and we have to see what the U.S. crop looks like. I remain firmly in the camp that longer-term CBOT corn has much more upside than downside from here. As far as soybean news, today I want to look at longer-term implications for CBOT soybeans. Yes, we have a very good bean crop going right now in the U.S., but we have some hot, dry weather coming. So for these purposes, let's assume we have a trend yield and a decent crop. Let's not make any major assumptions one way or the other, just for these purposes. But we are getting more and more U.S. soybean export business coming in. And U.S. crush margins are amazing. So U.S. export demand is getting bigger, U.S. crush demand is record large right now. And when you add all this up, it looks like we are headed towards U.S. soybean stocks this year and next year remaining mostly pretty flat. I've got a chart of this on the bottom of page one. And so we're going to end up with stocks this year and next year somewhere between 350 and 400 million bushels each year. And those stock levels by themselves are just not bullish. Okay. However, we have enormous crush margins. I've got a chart of this on the bottom on the right of page one. And these are CBOT crush margins, futures crush margins. Um crush mark futures crush margins are enormous. Cash crush margins are even bigger. Crushers are willing to pay whatever they have to to run their plants wide open at these types of margins. So now let's circle full circle back around to the U.S. crop. Until the market gets some better idea of the size of the U.S. crop, it's going to be hard to break CBOT soybeans. If the market thinks we are threatening the U.S. crop, the market's going to trade firm because our demand is so big we really can't afford to lose crop. So for us to ever really break CBOT soybeans, the market needs to be convinced that we have a really, really big U.S. crop. And or we need crush margins to erode a lot. And neither one of those seem like we're going to know that answer anytime soon. So CBOT soybeans continue to trade stated higher until we get further down the calendar and we know a whole lot more. Moving on to cattle, um CME cattle have continued to implode this week. The free fall in CME futures have led cash markets lower. Cash in Kansas traded as low as 230 uh earlier this week. That's down from 238 a week ago. And with this massive break in cattle prices, we also have seen beef prices breaking. But believe it or not, Packers are still losing money. Kills are down this week. Packers are cutting kills in an effort to get cash even lower and to stop beef prices from declining more. So if kills stay small, this is basically like sticking a knife right in the gut of the cattle feeder. Unfortunately, there's so many heavy cattle that are ready to go. Cattle feeder may be facing even lower cattle prices in the next few weeks. And this is after cash has already broken $30 or 11% in the last five weeks. USDA will issue its monthly cattle and feed report this afternoon. We expect placements into feed lots was down in the neighborhood of 2% in June. Marketings going out of feed lots was down around 3%, resulting in the number of cattle on feed in the feedlots on July 1 around 1.5% to 2% larger than a year ago. So even with smaller placements, this slow marketing pattern keeps on feed numbers at or above year-go levels for the remainder of 2026. Also, this afternoon, USDA will issue its biannual cattle inventory report. We all know the cattle numbers are small. The two numbers that we need to watch in this report are the number of beef cows and the size of the calf crop. We believe that the beef cow numbers are similar to uh a year ago levels, which would be right at the lowest levels since the early 1960s. And we expect that the 2026 calf crop will be in the neighborhood of 32.7 million head, which is slightly down from last year, which is a ridiculously small number. I've got a chart of this annual calf crop uh on the bottom of page uh two. When we look at the cattle inventories and especially at the calf and feeders outside the feedlights, we come to one major conclusion. Feeder availability going into feedlights for the rest of 2026 will be very small, somewhere in the neighborhood of down 1% from a year ago. But the summary here is that feeder supplies remain super tight. Moving forward, ranchers are not making any major effort to hold heifers, so supplies of feeders remain tight well into 2027 and likely into 2028. So for a long time, the number of cattle on feed does not grow, and beef supplies in the United States remain relatively flat for quite a while. That becomes bullish at some point down the road. For now, see me live cattle remain on the defensive. This market may need to clean up some before we are able to even think about going back up. Cash cattle may not have seen our its lows yet. Um however, feeder prices should remain well supported. But now we really, really had to watch corn prices. With cash cattle prices breaking so much, the cattle feeder in the United States has lost an enormous amount of money in the last five or six weeks. So he will be a lot more sensitive to high-priced corn. If corn prices start to rally, we can see feedlots finally pushing their chair back away from the table, and they have far less appetite for high feeder prices. But that requires a rally in corn. So we really need to be focused on corn prices now. Um looking at weather, uh, we've still got dry, hot, dry weather in the plains and inching over into the uh Iowa and Minnesota area, and dry weather continues well into the heart of the corn belt uh the next week and a half, two weeks. And uh I've got a chart on page three that I think is well worth taking a look at. I've got actually two maps. One is soil moisture in the United States a year ago and soil moisture today. It is dramatically different. And you can see a year ago, soil moisture, we had really good soil moisture, and that resulted in a record large corn yield of 186.5. This year, USDA is forecasting a corn yield of 183, which is the second highest corn yield ever, and we uh soil moisture looks dramatically worse. So, anyway, well worth taking a look at. Again, in my mind, this this points to a risk of uh a lower corn yield at some point down the road if we don't solve this hot, dry weather very, very quickly. That's it for today. Y'all have a good weekend. Uh, thanks for listening. We'll be back on Monday.