Global markets are trading higher this morning as Chinese trade data released overnight points to higher domestic consumption. The US budget is due to be released to Congress today, and investors will be looking at political reaction to see whether it contains enough to appease both sides, and cease help calm gridlock
Crops:
Crops are virtually unchanged in the early session as traders wait for the monthly release of the USDA global supply and demand report (also known as the WASDE) at noon today. Speculators will be looking closely at the US corn ending stocks number for 2012 to see if there will be confirmation of the bearish surprise speculators saw in the March 28th report.
According to Agriculture.com, 824 million bushels for US ending corn stocks is the tipping point – meaning that below that number will be a bullish signal for investors an above will be bearish.
Agriculture.com Expectations for today’s report
US ending stocks World ending stocks
Corn 0.824 billion bushels 120.2 million tonnes
Wheat 0.731 billion bushels 178.6 million tonnes
Soybeans 0.137 billion bushels 60.1 million tonnes
Weather also continues to be a concern for the US wheat belt, where freezing temperatures continue (temperatures are recorded in Farenheit)
