Trading Times Over Easter - And How Things Looked 12 Months Ago

06/04/12 -- As per usual there's no rest for the wicked with a heavy work schedule lined up for yours truly over the "holiday" weekend. I will spend that catching up on writing market reports, updating my charts, building Mrs N#3 an outdoor stand to accommodate all her seedlings which are starting to make the kitchen & utility room look like the summer house at Kew Gardens. Oh, and there's a couple of websites to produce too.

Meanwhile you lot will no doubt all be putting your feet up and stuffing your fat faces with Easter eggs.

No doubt bored shitless one or two of you will stumble inevitably towards the PC at home to check on what's happening, in an effort to prise yourself away from Aunty Beryl and her embarrassing stories about the time you stuck a lego brick up your nose when you were three.

Today the answer is that nothing is happening, it's Good Friday and everything is shut. Monday however is a different bain marie full of halibut. There's an overnight market Sunday night/Monday morning, and Chicago will operate a full normal trading session on Monday afternoon whilst London and Paris grains remain closed.

Monday night the USDA will release their weekly crop progress report, which will reveal how much corn and spring wheat has gone into the ground in the past week.

Tuesday everything returns to normal with London and Paris back open. Tuesday afternoon the USDA will issue their April WASDE and stocks report, so there could be some firework potential there. Suffice to say that by the time we finish our next trading session on Tuesday night there's the potential for prices to be fairly dramatically different to where they finished Thursday night.

Checking back to what was going on at Easter last year, Chicago closed Easter Monday with soybeans up 9 cents at USD13.89, corn was 25 1/4 cents higher at USD7.62 1/2 and CBOT wheat was ending the day with gains of 26 1/2 cents at USD8.26.

The day back after Easter saw May 11 London wheat close at GBP212.00/tonne with new crop Nov 11 at GBP180.00/tonne. May 11 Paris wheat was ended the session at EUR253.50/tonne.

As you can see, aside for soybeans, everything was a lot higher back then compared to where we currently reside.

Last Easter we were also concerned about UK and European drought (and it was three weeks later than it is this year). Spring wheat plantings in the US on Easter Sunday were only 6% done (they're already 8% complete as of last weekend).

It's early days. Downside potential still exists, particularly for wheat IMHO, and also of course for new crop corn. Soybeans and OSR could be another matter though...