The day after Thanksgiving should have been a quiet one for US traders. However, a data center outage has changed things. Some products on the CME Group futures markets cannot be traded. In France, arable farmers are well on their way to finishing their autumn work. Corn is almost finished and wheat has been sown, according to new figures from FranceAgriMer. In Brazil, growers were a bit late sowing soybeans, but this appears to have had little effect on yields.
The December wheat contract on the Matif closed yesterday down €0,25 at €189 per tonne. The CBoT was closed yesterday for the US Thanksgiving holiday.
The US stock exchange was supposed to reopen today (Friday, November 28). However, a technical glitch is preventing trading in CME Group's futures products. "Due to a cooling issue in CyrusOne's data centers, our markets are currently closed. Support is working to resolve the issue shortly and will inform customers of pre-market trading hours as soon as they become available," the CME Group website states.
In addition to products on the CBoT, there are problems with West Texas Intermediate crude oil, government bond futures, S&P 500 futures, and palm oil futures on the Malaysian exchange. Gold also experienced unusual fluctuations on the London exchange, likely related to the problems at CME and its electronic trading platform, Globex.
Exciting ending
At the time of writing, it's not yet clear when the outage will be resolved. Fortunately, it falls the day after Thanksgiving. This is typically a quiet day when the US government doesn't have major reports or other important dates scheduled for publication. However, it is an exciting day for traders with open positions in the gasoline and diesel futures market. These are contracts with physical settlement, and today is the expiration date for the December contract for these products. Traders with open positions who had wanted to exit today could potentially have to deliver or receive 42.000 gallons (approximately 159 cubic meters) of gasoline or diesel if the outage lasts longer.
Top soybean harvest expected in Brazil
Other news also comes from a financial institution, this time the Brazilian bank Itaú BBA. They have issued a new estimate for the Brazilian soybean harvest, predicting a record harvest of 178 million tons. The USDA was slightly more conservative in its recent Wasde report, with an estimate of 175 million tons, and the final harvest for the 2024/25 season was estimated at 171,5 million tons. According to Itaú BBA, the larger soybean harvest is partly due to an expansion of the acreage. The weather hasn't cooperated with soybean sowing in Brazil in recent weeks. Due to drought in one region and excessively wet conditions in another, some soybeans were sown too late, which is a good thing. A later sowing date isn't necessarily detrimental to the soybean yield. However, the later soybean sowing date could be detrimental to the subsequent corn crop after the soybeans. However, the bank expects a corn harvest in Brazil of 138 to 139 million tons. The USDA's latest forecast was for 131 million tons.
In France, the corn harvest is almost complete, according to new figures from FranceAgriMer. 99% of the harvest is complete, compared to 97% this week last year. Wheat sowing is also almost complete. 98% of the planned area is in the ground, compared to 93% this week last year and 94% in the five-year average. According to the French government agency, 99% of the planned winter barley area has now been sown.