Grains are about to get exciting.

Article courtesy of Andrew Whitelaw, TEM

Market Morsel

I love this time of year. It is not only that we have everything ahead of us in Australia, but it’s also when the grain market starts to get interesting.

The last half-year has been atypical. We would not usually get the excitement in markets which we have recently had. Apart from what is happening locally, the market is generally quite dull during the year’s end and start.

It is from around May until August that things typically get exciting, but why is that?. The reason for the buzz at this time of year is due to the weather risk. The approaching period is the global weather risk window.

The majority of the worlds grain and oilseed crop will be harvested between May and September, so all eyes are on production.

Traders and analysts watch the crop with earnest, and if they see an inkling of things going wrong somewhere, it tends to pump the market up. At times it will be overdone and just a rash movement that will go as quickly as it came, but it makes for opportunity and excitement.

So this is the make or break period for the global grain and oilseed crop. In Australia, we tag along at the end of it once everyone else is finished!

The charts below detail both the combined and individual crops and what percentage of each will be harvested in a given month.

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