Numbers drive the futures markets. Every day traders use the data available to them in the ever-shifting calculations to determine whether to buy or sell — taking prices where the numbers say they should go.
If the government releases a harvest progress report that notes delays in a key producing region, that could be a sign of tightening supplies, indicating prices should go higher. Meanwhile, news that exports were down by a large enough percentage on the month would hint at declining demand, a bearish factor weighing on prices.
The flow of data can seem endless at times, and arbitrary at others, but there are some numbers the trade always takes great stock in.
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For the North American grain and oilseed markets, the United States Department of Agriculture has long been a source of core fundamental market-moving data. From the daily and weekly export sales reports to the monthly World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE), USDA reports are followed closely.
That means that the 43-day U.S. government shutdown — while a few reports did trickle out — left the futures markets largely operating blind during the period. In the absence of official reports, traders relied on the best guesses of analysts.
Now though, the U.S. government is back in business and the official line of data will take precedence again.
Export sales
Normally the USDA releases a report every Thursday morning detailing any fresh export business put on the books during the previous week. Equivalent export sales data is not provided in Canada. Our government only reports how much actually moved after the fact. The U.S. export sales data shows how much will move in the future and can be a key factor in determining carryout supplies.
The USDA also releases daily updates whenever a single soybean, corn or wheat sale tops 100,000 tonnes.
When the government reopened, all of those daily flash sales reports missed during the shutdown surged out at once Nov. 17. However, the missed weekly data will be doled out over the next two months, with the USDA only expected to be current in early January.
Chinese purchases of U.S. soybeans will be of particular interest to traders as that data is released. During the shutdown, U.S. President Donald Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and came away from the meeting claiming China had agreed to purchase 12 million tonnes of soybeans before the end of the year and an additional 25 million tonnes in each of the following three years.
As China likes to buy in bulk, it often shows up in the daily flash sales. However, as captured in the daily data, it only bought 232,000 tonnes of U.S. soybeans during the shutdown. While they could account for some of the additional business to “unknown destinations,” it’s looking unlikely that the 12 million tonnes will be reached.
There were claims in the trade that China bought at least 14 cargoes on Nov. 17, but none of that rumoured business was large enough to be included in the daily flash updates — which means the official line on those sales won’t be known until the New Year.
Canada is still dealing with its own trade issues with China, but the canola market will take some direction from what happens in the soybean complex in the upcoming weeks as U.S. exports become clearer.
Speculative position
The weekly commitments of traders reports compiled by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission were also missing during the shutdown. Those numbers are used to determine whether large speculative fund traders are long or short a commodity and provide a good indicator of sentiment in the market.
Prior to the shutdown, managed money traders were sitting on a net short position in canola of about 4,800 contracts as of Sept. 23. That was the largest net short in canola since April 2025 and was a sign that the technicals were turning bearish for the oilseed. However, the futures have generally trended higher over the past two months. Was that uptrend tied to speculators putting on bullish bets? Possibly, but we won’t know for certain until the reporting catches up.
At this point, the primary focus in the futures will be more on whatever “new” numbers are released and less on the delayed old data just coming to light now. However, the fact that more numbers will be available once again will create a clearer picture of the forces driving futures.
