Agriculture futures markets are closed Monday, President’s Day.
Highlights
Was yesterday’s soybean action the signal that the market has started to believe the monster soybean crop in Brazil will get harvested? Or was it the tariff threats, the possibility the war in Eastern Europe will soon come to an end, or the sharply lower crude oil reducing the value of bean oil, or something else? In any case, March beans traded lower than any day since 17 January.
During the course of a 90 minute phone call yesterday, Russia's President Putin invited Trump to Moscow to begin discussion of ending the war. "He wants it to end. He doesn't want to end it and then go back to fighting six months later," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
During the phone conversation, they also discussed the Middle East, Artificial Intelligence, the U.S. dollar exchange rate, and “various subjects.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered the new administration's statement on its approach to the war, saying Kyiv could not realistically hope to return to previous borders or join NATO.
In an interview with Fox News that aired Monday, Donald Trump suggested that Ukraine “may be Russian someday,” throwing into question the future independence of Ukraine.