Updates!

Cashews

Obviously new crop is in, the Tet holiday is winding down and shipments will start to flow, but currently most importers are short on product, anticipating a price reduction to the market most have waited and hence find themselves in this predicament. We strongly advise that you book 1^st QTR needs, we don’t think prices will start to move down till April sometime and that means shipments arriving in May, also something to be aware of, with the trouble on the West Coast ports, more and more shipments are being diverted to the East Coast and that could also be a factor in delaying arrival. We also don’t think we will see a price drop in the pieces market due to the advancement of cracking machinery reducing the amount of breakage to 15% down from almost 33%.

Almonds

Even though we hear about damage to the trees due to the 5^th year of the drought and the lack of El Nino again, we think the farmers know they have to tread a very careful line. Prices are at a record high and while domestic sales have been robust, sales to Europe have slowed, now this could still be the issues with the port or a more systemic problem. With that in mind the Almond farmers have been acting very responsibly and don’t want the pricing to keep going up because they feel the market is comfortable at this level. We also await the bloom report and this month shipment report, post that we could see this market go either way and a bad subjective report would spike prices even beyond the control of the farmers.

Pecans

This commodity has had an all-time record high movement in pricing and all we said from our past reports have come to be, now we are seeing a quieter time for pecans, not a lull per say but pecans meteoric price increase has slowed, saying that if China now post its new year’s comes in heavy again then the price is likely to continue to spike higher. Also to be remembered, it hasn’t been a very large crop.