Market Plus with Ted Seifried

Paul Yeager: Welcome back to the table for the Friday, April 25th, 2025 installment of Market Plus. Joining us now. Ted. Seifried Ted. Before we get going, you are going to join us in LeClaire, Iowa, in June, June 3rd to have another live discussion. And I will tell you, I know you've watched some of the other discussions you have. Those are pretty free wheeling. Are you okay with that? 

Ted Seifried: Yeah. Absolutely. I'm really looking forward to it. I think it's gonna be great.

Paul Yeager: So go to our website markettomarket.org and you can sign up there and come in and see Ted and I in LeClaire. It's a Tuesday in the late afternoon, early evening. So that's where we want to go. So Ted, let's start with questions. Then I got a couple other ones I want to ask you. Let's start Eric here. If we could. July wheat has not shown any strength. Can we expect a positive price move in May? You kind of hit this a couple of times in the show, but let's say it again.

Ted Seifried: Yeah. I'd love to see that, Eric, but we just, you know, we keep trying to give wheat reasons to go higher in wheat. Just keeps telling us no. So, I do think that wheat is undervalued. I do think there is upside potential for wheat. But what gets us there? What gets speculator speculators funds, excited about buying wheat? You got to have some sort of technical breakout, and you felt like we were almost there at the end of last week. But then this week, we kind of completely took it away. the good news is that it as we move along that, that point that we need to reach to get that technical breakout gets lower and lower and lower. So I think the possibility exists, but I don't know what the spark is going to be to get it.

Paul Yeager: Well, maybe it's this Jeremy in Michigan. His question is if the Russia Ukraine conflict heats back up, will the markets notice it or ignore it?

Ted Seifried: Yeah. You know, I really don't think so. I think, you know, markets become jaded over things. And I think to some extent the trade wars is that now too. But markets could jaded right. So we've had multiple years of Russia, Ukraine, Russia attacking ports, Russia attacking vessels. And every time it happens we get less and less of an effect. So I don't think we've really priced in an end to this thing. at this point, if it heats back up, I think the market's just going to look at it as more of the same. “Ceteris paribus” just, you know, all things remaining equal. Right. I think the bigger surprises if there is a resolution, but there too, I'm not exactly sure if that's a bullish or bearish in the short run. Longer term, it's probably bearish because of the amount of production that can come back online from the Ukraine.

Paul Yeager: Because they don't have to be producing in fear in some places. And we're a little more okay, I get because I was going to ask about that during the program. That's what I thought you were trying to say. All right. Let's see what Ted says about this Flash in Iowa. Asked you on X when will we get $6 corn and will this help? Sure. I bring this thing back, I'm sure. Flash time.

Ted Seifried: All right. I really want the. I want it to happen, right. I want so I, I'm encouraging. I'm giving corn a reason to try. like I said, you know, there's so much uncertainty over global economy, domestic economy, things like that. If those things, don't come to fruition, if my concerns about the economy in global demand, if those don't come to fruition, we get trade deals, countries are buying more from us. Corn in particular, which demand's already been hot and we get a weather issue. $6 corn is a possibility. It really is, right? I mean, I can see a path to $6 corn. I could see a path to $3.50 corn. The problem is we don't know which way that's going to go from here. And we're dealing with things that are much bigger than the weather. Right? Weather's obviously a big deal every year when it comes to corn production, but we have no idea what's going to happen. I have no idea what's going to happen with trade, with the global economy, things like that. I, unfortunately, I have a much more pessimistic view than what the markets seem to have had this week. But hopefully I'm wrong. And if I am wrong, then I think there is that upside.

Paul Yeager: Potential to it. I think over the years we've chatted about eating through demand, and that's through ethanol. Right. Sustainable aviation fuel. Can we eat through our demand on our own to solve and boost and use your word spark this market?

Ted Seifried: Yeah. And I think, are you talking more about soybeans now?

Paul Yeager: Let's start with corn ethanol and oil because I mean crude still languishing. Then we can get into yeah.

Ted Seifried: The being well, you know, obviously if we can get year round E15 going, which I think they there might be some traction on that. But I mean, yeah, there's ways through policy that we can get more demand for corn for ethanol and therefore corn. I really I've been a big proponent of that for a long period of time. So we'll see if it happens or not. I've learned not to hold my breath, however, but look, demand for corn, both domestic and for export, has been really rather good. I mean, really good. Much better than what we were expecting at the beginning. of this current ending marketing year. so I don't know if we really need all that much more demand for corn. I mean, we've watched our balance sheet shrink from the originally projected 2.4 billion to just over 1.5. to soybeans. That's the question. Right. And if we lose a lot of our export demand to China. So let's do quick math. I mean, I'm sure you guys have heard it many times, but just to remind everybody, China for 24-25, I would give you 25, 26 numbers if I had them, but the USDA gives them next month anyways. But if we can be if we take Argentina to task and be that value add producer, then that's great, then we don't have to worry about China. and I think that happens over time. But you just can't build crush capacity fast enough to make that work. and crush capacity in no way, shape or form is going to be is going to grow enough for next year to offset a very significant, a potentially very significant loss in export demand.

Paul Yeager: I think a year ago, two years ago, we've sat here and chatted about maybe new crush facilities you hear in anybody building a crush facility right now is do they feel confident enough, secure enough, or, stable enough to do it?

Ted Seifried: Well, this isn't really the climate to want to do that in Paul, right? Crush margins aren't amazing like they were for a while. Crush margins are great. You have a whole lot of uncertainty about global trade. You have a whole lot of uncertainty about domestic demand. You have a whole lot of uncertainty about the global economy. I just I don't feel like this is a, an environment where we want to go out and invest trillions of dollars in building infrastructure, especially with rates being high. It's just it's not really conducive to that unless there is some sort of government intervention, which I am usually very opposed to government intervention. But I said it going back to the first trade deal, because I want to see our domestic demand increase for soybeans. I think it makes us more independent if we're going to be causing trade wars, if the government is going to interfere with markets and destroy demand, I, in this case, export demand, well then I am okay with the government coming in and encouraging demand in one way, shape or form in order to offset a market factor. And this is one of those times where I think that could be justified. I don't know if you want to do it as far as, tax incentives for infrastructure development or efficiency development. but I, I think that would be appropriate. one of the few times where I would be a proponent of that, but I really would love to see some sort of incentive for our crush facilities for our crush industry to really increase and grow. In a quick way, and give these guys less risk because there's just a tremendous amount of risk out there.

Paul Yeager: It's a major question that could take the next half hour, but if you could boil it down to just a few points or a few seconds, what's the end goal of all this?

Ted Seifried: What's the end goal of the…

Paul Yeager: Any, the trade, the trade, the shaking of the. Disrupting of the market.

Ted Seifried: Yeah, yeah. I think like it's I earlier I said it's to take the wind out of the sails of China becoming the number one superpower in the world to knock China down a peg to, to really, to derail China from the big growth that they've seen because having 60% of global manufacturing, there's a ton of global currency flowing into China. And they're using it for defense. They're using it. They've explicitly said that they want to be the number one superpower in the world. And that's a direct threat to us. I think that is our main objective here, Paul. And if that's the case, this is not going to be quick. We're not going to have a deal with China over the weekend for them to come in and buy a ton of our goods to make that trade deficit go away. And all of a sudden there are best friends. I hope I'm wrong on that, but I really think that is the number one priority and that all of the other things that have been talked about, like, again, cutting the trade gap, bringing manufacturing jobs to the US, using tariffs to help offset income taxes. I think those are all going to be happy benefits or side effects. But the number one goal, in my opinion, from what I can tell, Paul, is to really stop China, you know, from their big growth that they've had. and again, that's not a short lived trade war takes away a much bigger endeavor. Yeah.

Paul Yeager: Well, it takes a while to break things down. Good luck here the rest of the spring. and whatever it is that you do and all your travels. And we will see you in early summer in LeClaire, Ted. We can keep this discussion going.

Ted Seifried: Absolutely. I'm really looking forward to that, Paul. Hopefully everybody can come in and see it.

Paul Yeager: All right. The tickets are free. Sign up in markettomarket.org Ted. Sorry for it everyone. Thank you. And thank you. Sign up, if you want to sign up for our market newsletter we'll give you insight on how to come to LeClaire. It's free! Sign up in markettomarket.org Next week we will look at a mind product that's impacting both the Corn Belt and the Rose Bowl. We'll also have Arlan Suderman here to break down the commodity markets. Thanks for joining us. Have a great week.

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