Beans Flipped Red for the Week

Soybean futures ended the day with double digit losses for the July contract and beyond. That flipped the board to the red for the week with July down 6 cents from Friday to Friday. March futures had options expire at the close,  with deliveries beginning after Tuesday’s FND. Meal ended Friday’s trade with $2 to $4/ton gains. Soybean oil futures fell by 1.5% on the last trade day of the week. 

Ahead of the March soybean’s option expiration today, there were 3.2k 1520 calls open against 5.1k puts. 

After the ION hacking delays, CFTC released Commitment of Traders data as of the 1/31 settlement – nearly a month old. At the time, managed money was 175,504 contracts net long (and adding longs) and the commercials were 208,745 contracts net short in beans. 

Weekly Export Sales through Feb 16 were shown as 544,915 MT. That was a 20% increase from last week’s volume with 142k MT for Egypt. China booked 176k MT but 120k MT were switched from unknown. As of 2/16, there were 48.578 MMT (1.5 bbu) on the books for old crop soybeans, a 29% lead over last year and including 40.8 MMT of exported bens and 7.73 MMT of unshipped sales. New crop soybean commitments were shown at 1.174 MMT as of 2/16. 

Soymeal sales were 65,574 MT for the week that ended 2/16, which was below estimates. Accumulated meal commitments were 7.553 MMT as of 2/16. Soybean oil bookings for the week were shown as 755 MT of net cancelations. Soy oil commitments were 50,863 MT as of 2/16.  

The BAGE lowered their estimate for Argentina’s soybean crop by 4.5 MMT to 38 MMT. 

Mar 23 Soybeans  closed at $15.29, down 5 1/4 cents,

Nearby Cash   was $14.79 1/1, down 7 3/4 cents,

May 23 Soybeans  closed at $15.19 1/4, down 8 cents,

Jul 23 Soybeans  closed at $15.08 1/2, down 11 cents,