"Copy and Paste" week

c/o Henry Stimler

Compiling this week’s report could be as easy as copy and paste from last week’s report but being a consummate professional I will attempt to write pretty much the same thing as last time with a hope of coming of not too repetitive.

Saying that, it is very much the same. Prices have only continued to go up on certain items and the rest we do not have clarity to give any real updates. Here goes.

Cashews.

Prices continue to go up as we have seen for the last few weeks. The rise has been in $0.05 to $0.15 increments. This has to do with the high price of seed. Saying that we don’t feel this is going to turn into a runaway commodity. Till Jan pricing is expected to go up and then post that the price should settle down, much like last year. The cause for the price increase as per last week is that the Sheller’s can no longer mix cheap seed with current seed since all has been used. We should see post Jan the price of new seed come down which will bring pricing down.

Pieces Market is a completely different fish. As we have kept saying for weeks, now that the ability of the Sheller’s to get unbroken cashews means less and less pieces yet the demand for pieces is still very much there. So when you have an actual physical shortage expect prices to keep going up.

Almonds.

More of the same, as I said last week, the shipment report will not be a good indicator and even though it’s a tad lower than last year it didn’t make a spot of difference. Prices continue to be very high. The growers are beyond nervous, on the one hand with the reports of crop damage rumors of now upcoming needed rainfall for next year’s crop legitimize these high prices BUT on the other hand if the almond prices just continue to go up the blow back is going to be enormous, reminiscent of 20 years ago when Peanuts got to high and were replaced by Almonds (I was 16 at the time and it was traumatic). Large conglomerates will just abandon Almonds in its products and the damage would take years to rectify. Growers are sensitive to this and are trying to act in a responsible manner. This along with the tremendous volatility we are seeing makes it very hard to call but we can only speculate that post Jan we will see a price correction.

Pecans.

Prices are staying where they are. Market is high and dry, very little product floating around, the harvest will miss the season since its scheduled for November 15^th meaning no deliveries till December and the bottleneck pipeline will take time to filter down but as we said prior post Jan we shall see a good price correction.

Pistachios.

Not enough info a this current time.

Walnuts.

Same, waiting on the market to stabilize