The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

The song of harvest has begun. The base rhythm of big diesel engines, the occasional shrill warble of fire trucks and the soothing rush of cab air conditioners, all blending into a roar of wheat, peas, lentils, garbanzos and more flowing over the...

Chicago wheat just put in a positive price week, the first since August 5-6-7-8. December futures jumped from $4.65 to $5.01, 36 cents in six trading sessions. A two month old trend-line was broken last Friday when the “Dec” closed decisively ove...

Commodities prices as a class have been declining since 2011, according to the CRB Commodities Index. Created by The Commodities Research Bureau, it is an indicator based on a wide selection of commodity prices; that is, prices for real-world...

Wheat is an actively traded market, with participants ranging from individual small speculative traders, farmers and local cooperative elevators to billion dollar trading funds and multi-national grain handling firms. There are futures contracts...

The wheat market as revealed by Chicago soft red winter futures is a one-day wonder. Since mid-May, all of the significant price changes have come in single sessions. On May 14, July contracts opened at $4.81½ and closed 33 cents higher at $5.14½. T...

U.S. grain markets, including wheat, corn and soybeans are reflecting some volatility, as they bounce in a 30-40 cent range, but essentially they have no direction. Wheat in Chicago has accomplished nothing since late January this year. Tuesday’s c...

In the 23 trading sessions following Dec. 18, 2014, the Chicago March wheat futures contract dropped $1.22 per bushel. The average bid for Pacific Northwest white wheat in Portland also declined by about 90 cents (approximately 73% of the Chicago...

The futures markets are always keen to respond to dramatic events and ideas, usually exaggerating the effects, occasionally well beyond any conceivable reality. Still, at this point the markets have so far reacted to the drama in the Ukraine's Crimea...

For the 11 trading ses­sions ending Tues­day, Chicago wheat prices have traded within 20 cents per bushel of the lowest price since July 2010. There is doubt in the minds of would-be buyers; those that normally like to try to buy bottoming patterns,...

One of the occupational hazards of being a wheat producer or landlord is that most of the time spent on analyzing wheat prices is focused on determination of "why the price should go UP." The problem is a kind of blindness to reasons why the price...

End-of-year position adjustments coming up? Most very large futures traders are holding onto extremely heavy net short-sold positions in Chicago wheat. The other major wheat contracts in Kansas City hard red winter and Minneapolis spring also...

I f you find yourself waking down the centerline of a busy street, it is very useful to be aware of where the cars and trucks are (in both directions). And every once in a while it is good to look a couple of blocks ahead to be prepared for that big...

The price of wheat revealed by the Chicago markets since August/September of 2013 has been through quite a swing, starting from around $6.35 at harvest lows, moving up to $7.10 or so in October, then returning to the lows again in November. That is...

Wheat markets have a language. For the wheat owner right now, the decision to hold wheat in storage or sell it before year-end has many facets, like taxes, interest costs, bills due and so on, but sometimes the market's voice tells us that selling...

A fter a very smooth and orderly decline that has last- ed three weeks, the wheat price has paused. There is always a kind of nervous twitch exhibited when the market reaches the end or beginning of a significant move. Some would call this...

A fter a very smooth and orderly decline that has lasted three weeks, the wheat price has paused. There is always a kind of nervous twitch exhibited when the market reaches the end or beginning of a significant move. Some would call this...

Tuesday marked the 12th trading day during which the December wheat price in Chicago worked to lower levels: a 50-cent decline, which surrendered pretty much all of the upward gains from the mid-September/mid- October rally. Even in its weakness,...

On September 16, the Chicago December wheat contract price began a move up from seasonally expected lows. Over the next 26 sessions, 70 cents were added to the price of soft red winter wheat to be delivered in De- cember to Chicago/Toledo locations....

One really nice thing about trying to understand the wheat market compared to bonds, stocks or other financial markets is the reality factor. Wheat is real stuff, made from sunshine, water, dirt and a lot of hard work. There is only a given amount...

There is no market of any stripe that is not watching events in Washington, D.C. with a kind of horrible fascination. It is like watching a horror film, knowing that the chainsaw killer is in the next room, and bad things are going to happen, while...

The existence and validity of any actively traded market depends on the flow of decisions and actions of a very large number of people. Without this minute-by-minute flow of activity from thousands of speculators, hedgers, end- users, governments...

Last week was a great week for wheat prices, even though no news had been the rule for most of the time since the first week of August. On Monday, the last trading day of September, USDA finally gave us something to look at. There's more old-crop...

Just like trying to put a vehicle in gear and drive with the parking brake on, the wheat market is laboring way too hard in its attempt to clear a near-term objective to the upside. It is clear that the supply/demand for US wheat shows the tightest...

Chicago December wheat contracts continue to pound away at their life-of-contract lows. Over the entire his- tory of active trading from mid-September 2011, the December contract price reached highs of $9.13 per bushel in November 2012. Since that...

The mind of the wheat market is pondering a seasonal low. $6.35 - $6.38 - $6.36hellip;The last three lows printed by the Chicago December futures contract, all within the last three weeks and all within three cents of the lowest the contract has...