This week, we hosted an exciting two part webinar hosted by grain market expert and guest host, Darin Newsom and Barchart's Head of Commodities, Michael Browne. During the webinar, Darin and Michael discussed the current outlook of the volatile grain market, the current impact of COVID-19, how USDA's quarterly numbers relate to Darin's own studies using the cmdty National Price Indexes, an update on the latest tools available from cmdty, and much more. Didn’t get the memo? No worries, we recap’d it for you here!

Darin started off by giving a recap of the latest USDA Report, as well as an in-depth overview of some bottom line fundamentals, problems within the report, and a way to find any missing data with cmdty Indexes. Darin filled us in on how he uses the cmdty Indexes to find what the ending stocks to use are when USDA doesn’t give you all the data you need.

Darin then emphasized how strong the National Soybean Basis is, and that with weak carry, just these two things tell us supply and demand is currently bullish. He also gave his feedback on where he thinks soybean basis is headed and goes over the current soybean forward curve.

Darin explained how it’s going to be difficult to catch up in the soybean market because of the U.S. Dollar showing bullish signs, and the stronger the U.S. Dollar, the more difficult it is to move any commodity. He compared this to the current state of the Brazilian Real, pointed out two caveats when it comes to the Phase-One Deal, and reveals what country he thinks China will be buying their soybeans from.

Darin also gave us an overview of the current state of both wheat and corn including cost of carry, factors going into production and supplies, concerns for the winter wheat market, struggles in the corn market, and projections of exports for wheat and corn.

Darin also went over the current state of ethanol, and while doing so touched on the state of crude oil, and why he thinks it will continue to drop. He then explained corn’s “3-legged demand stool” including strong feed demand and how the Coronavirus will be a wild card, weakened ethanol demand, and weakened export demand.

Barchart Head of Commodities, Michael Browne then took over to share what exciting products Barchart has in the works as well as the latest products that have been released, starting with cmdty Marketplace.

Marketplace provides grain elevators with a private community that they can share with their producers that is completely branded and flows in perfectly with their business. This provides farmers with free mobile and desktop access to software that ties elevators into their workflows, as well as access to news, weather, and the ability to see your cash bids. Michael explained how Marketplace seamlessly integrates into the cmdtyView Pro market data platform, allowing you to manage the only two workflows you need - all in one single solution.

He then explained how you can take your analysis to the next level with cmdtyView Excel. With cmdtyView Excel, users can build their own models such as end-of-day models, bid monitors, forecasting tools, etc., or users have the choice to leverage our gallery of pre-built excel templates such as a Futures Market Dashboard, Cash Forwards and Basis Seasonality, U.S. Crop Production Forecasts, U.S. Crude Oil Pipeline Dashboard, and Ethanol Profitability Dashboard - all which can be customized to fit your needs.

In summary, cmdtyView Excel users are able to access real-time futures and options data, historical data, cash and basis indexes, and deep fundamental data sets.

Michael then pointed out the free daily price reports that we now have available, including an International Grain Report, Crop Production Forecast Report, U.S. Scrap Yard Report, U.S. Retail Fuel Price report, and U.S. Oil Price Bulletin. You can subscribe to any and all of these reports now to receive this proprietary data daily to keep a pulse on global commodity markets!

As you can see, this webinar covered a lot of valuable ground and this blog post only scratches the surface. You can watch the full webinar now to find out what else was covered. To learn more about Marketplace, our branded mobile apps that connect elevators and producers, please click here. To learn more about our flagship market data platform cmdtyView, click here. You can learn more about our cmdtyView Excel add-in here. And to subscribe to any of our free daily price reports, click here.