Photo by Christophe Maertens on Unsplash

We kickoff the day with MBA 30year Mortgage Rate, MBA Mortgage Market Index, MBA Mortgage Refinance Index, MBA Purchase Index, and MBA Mortgage Applications at 6:00 A.M., ADP Employment Change at 7:15 A.M., Retail Inventories Ex Autos MoM Adv, Wholesale Inventories MoM Adv, Goods Trade Balance Adv, Corporate Profits QoQ Prel, GDP Price Index QoQ 2^nd Est, GDP Growth Rate QoQ 2^nd Est, GDP Sales QoQ Est, PCE Prices QoQ 2^nd Est, Real Consumer Spending QoQ 2^nd Est, Core PCE Prices QoQ rnd Est at 7:30 A.M., Pending Home Sales MoM & YoY, and EIA Energy Stocks at 9:30 A.M., 17-Week Bill Auction at 10:30 A.m., and Dairy Products Sales at 2:00 P.M.

Hurricane Idalia made landfall with one side bushing Florida but the worst is yet to come with the left side that will threaten catastrophic storm surge making it a category 3 or 4. Last night’s API showed a whopping draw on crude of 111.486M, Cushing was down 2.23M, while products had builds 1.4M on gasoline and 2.46M on distillates. It will be pricey and dicey to replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR’s). The Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey showed that the number of job openings fell by 338,000 from the previous month to 8.827M jobs, the lowest since March 2021 the pandemic days. It was also far below trade estimates that called for 300,000 job increase, which was the third largest miss on record.

On the Corn Front we are slightly higher recovering from Tuesday break on the ongoing hot and dry weather which will return during the Labor Day weekend. There are very important days of weather the next 2-3 weeks of important Central US weather, before harvest starts after September 21^st US crop dry down will be rapid in 2023 with the record heat and dryness of the next 10 to 14 days. 2023 started  with the driest stretch of weather from mid-May to mid-June and will finish with bookend hot and dry period from mid-August to mid-September. Yesterday’s preliminary CBOT corn open interest fell be 30,362 contracts. Tomorrow is First Notice Day on September corn and limited deliveries are expected on September corn. Although, we had are fifth flash sale of the week going to unknown destinations with 266 thousand of soybeans in today’s sales. There is a lot of interest on feed grains this year and the flash sales this week also reflected that. In the overnight electronic session the December corn is currently trading at 489 ¾ which is 3 cents higher. The trading range has been 491 ¾ to 486 ½.

On the Ethanol Front Michigan Farm News an official publication of the Michigan Farm Bureau blasted an “opaque and biased” EPE report. While the EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) is making misleading and unfounded claims about corn ethanol’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA). The biofuels industry group called out the SAB in a letter to EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan, pointing out that overwhelming evidence from scientific analyses and data clearly shows corn starch ethanol significantly reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to the gasoline it replaces. In a draft commentary sent to Regam earlier this week, SAB tried to downplay the climate benefits of corn ethanol and recommended that the EPA conduct more extensive research on ethanol’s carbon footprint. RFA President and CEO Geoff Cooper said, Indeed, the best available science shows just the opposite.” Stay Tuned! There were no trades or open interest in etnhanol futures.

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