Sunday, and the screens did most of the talking. Four things worth your attention before Monday, and one number that moved without anybody claiming credit for it.
Chicago
Wheat was the biggest honest move on the board. The CBOT front month settled at 699.25 US cents a bushel, up from 664.50, a gain of 5.2 per cent in a single session and roughly 257 dollars a tonne. It arrived without a fresh Black Sea headline attached: no tender award in the day's wires, no export ban, no new insurance notice. Moves of that size in a grain contract usually pull the milling buyers in North Africa and the Gulf off the fence within days, since the 700-cent handle is the sort of round number that turns a slow procurement committee into a fast one. Anyone holding unpriced Q4 wheat commitments spent the weekend doing arithmetic.
The pump
The refined barrel split from the crude barrel in spectacular fashion. Brent gained 3.7 per cent to 94.39 dollars, while RBOB gasoline fell 7.7 per cent to 3.0468 dollars a gallon and ULSD eased 1.5 per cent to 4.3848. A crude rally alongside a near eight per cent drop in gasoline is the shape you get when the front-month gasoline contract runs to expiry at the end of the month and the winter specification behind it prices materially cheaper. The consequence for cargo work is the same either way: the gasoline crack has thinned sharply, diesel has held its ground, and West African importers pricing September gasoline against a screen that just fell that far will want their formulas checked before they sign.
Lusaka
Copper on COMEX added 1.6 per cent to 6.587 dollars a pound, or 14,522 dollars a tonne, which is an extraordinary level to be printing into a week in which Zambia is arguing about who won its election. One proposed citizen challenge to the presidential result was dropped as the post-poll week opened, while opposition figure Brian Mundubile accused the state of moving to block a petition before the filing deadline, and the Commonwealth called for an end to arbitrary arrests after a killing in Kabulonga. Nothing here touches a mine gate yet. It does touch the border posts, the fuel queues and the officials who sign export paperwork on the Copperbelt, which is where a Zambian political week is usually felt first.
Pune
India's sugar squeeze has a number on it. Ex-mill prices have run from around 3,800 rupees a quintal in June to above 6,000 rupees in several cities, and government measures have only now begun to take the heat out, with white sugar imports floated as the faster fix on a tight timeline. Underneath that, the arrears are piling up: the sugar commissioner has added five more mills to revenue recovery certificate action in Maharashtra over unpaid cane dues, bringing the tally to 15, with two of them in Solapur district. Solapur is also where growers report cane growth stunted in Madha taluka after a dry spell left leaves yellowing. New York #11 closed at 17.60 cents a pound, up 0.7 per cent, which is a market that has not yet decided India is a buyer.
Ticks
Urea unchanged at 409 dollars a tonne and DAP unchanged at 792.50, a fourth consecutive flat print on both. Chinese sulphur held at 9,235.67 yuan a tonne, about 1,374 dollars. Cobalt unmoved at 56,290 dollars a tonne. Palm oil steady at 5,018 ringgit, roughly 1,243 dollars. The Baltic Dry sat at 2,841. In Kinshasa, Félix Tshisekedi set out five strategic priorities for the next decade of the country's defence college, while Azarias Ruberwa warned him publicly against a third term and Moïse Katumbi's party described its internal crisis as an aggravated misunderstanding. In Kwango, unpaid teachers in Popokabaka are threatening to boycott the start of the school year.