We kicked off the day with Export Sales, Initial Jobless Claims, Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index, Continuing Jobless Claims, Jobless Claims 4-Week Average, Philly Fed Business Conditions, Philly CAPEX Index, Philly Fed Employment, Philly Fed New Orders, and Philly Fed Prices Paid at 7:30 A.M., Fed Bowman Speech at 8:05 A.M., Fed Williams Speech at 8:15 A.M., Existing Home Sales, Existing Home Sales MoM, and CB Leading Index at 9:00 A.M., EIA Natural Gas Storage at 9:30 A.M., Fed Bostic Speech at 10:00 AM.,4-Week & 8-Week Bill Auction at 10:30 A.M., 5-Year TIPS Auction at 12:00 P.M., and Fed Bostic Speech at 4:45 P.M.

Photo by Jesse Gardner on Unsplash

Grain futures are mixed in a reversal of yesterday with corn & soybean futures lower while wheat futures get a dead cat bounce. Low volume totals reflect lack of trading interest as the bulls & Bears debate the upcoming Northern hemisphere growing season.. Expect another choppy trade in today’s action with a modest bounce on Friday as we head into the weekend with many geo-political risks-on-at play. The Phillips 66Rodeo California Refinery (Rodeo Renewed) announced it is operating and producing 27,000 barrels of renewable diesel daily as of April 15^th. Rodeo Renewable plans to reach it’s plant’s production capacity of 50,000 barrels per day later this quarter. At the current rate of renewable diesel production, the Rodeo Phillips 66 plant is consuming 8.6 Mil pounds of feedstocks daily with a push to reach 16.1 Mil pounds of feedstock consumption by late June. At capacity, this would add 15% of US biofuel production. Rodeo is the largest US biofuel producer and will significantly boost US renewable diesel production. Phillips 66 has not announced what feedstocks the plant will utilizing, but soybean oil should hold a sizable percentage of the feedstocks based on current price relationships, The US Soybean Crush industry has been waiting for Rodeo to come online for years. And talk of squeezing out more fuel from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR’s) instead of replenishing always at a loss from where and when the government tap’s into the Reserves. This is dangerous to National Security as the administration as both domestic and foreign policy extremely dangerous and just another self-inflicted failure that needs to be held accountable.

The Rosario Grain Exchange raised corn crop size questions on Wednesday with their crop size questions suggesting that corn stunt losses could grow with N Argentine fields reporting harvested yield losses of 40-50%. Also, corn stunt disease has pushed unusually far south into Central Santa Fe and Cordoba. BAGE may further lower their ’24 Argentine corn production estimate later today, but additional harvest data is required to define the disease’s full impact. Play It Again Sam! For the Bears & Bulls it’s the US Marine line of Hurry Up & Wait!

More By This Author:

Inflation Nation Everywhere. The Corn & Ethanol Report
Risk On – Risk Off Commodities 101. The Corn & Ethanol Report
Inflation Steeling WASDE’s Thunder. The Corn & Ethanol Report