Daily Brief Thematic (Sector/Industry): Southeast Asia Plantations: U.S. Midwest Drought and more

• The USDA surprised the market with a 5% lower-than-expected planted soybean area in 2023, with soybeans rallying 7%.  
• The U.S. Midwest drought remains in focus. Dry areas are by far the greatest since 2002 and soybean crop ratings are at historic lows for this time of year. 
• With the budding El Niño, supply risk to edible oils in 2024 continues to rise. Reiterate the positive call on Plantations and the bullish CPO price forecast. 

• OVERSEAS. US out for Independence Day – not a lot to report; European Stocks gain, and volumes 1/3 of normal;  META to Launch “Thread”, to compete with Twitter
• JAPAN. NKY Futs -0.8% vs Cash; USDJPY 144.5; NKY -1% as JP succumbs to profit taking; Toyota to cut Solid State battery costs by 50%; Rakuten to list Securities biz
• NUGGET.  Lawson – if management can execute on their MTP, the stock is super cheap. Potential growth, Yield, Take out play ?

In the next installment of our Webinar Wednesdays, we go live with Smartkarma Insight Providers, Pranav Bhavsar and Nitin Mangal. They will be sharing with us their Top Stock Picks in India. From trends, current opportunities, and insights on their picks, join us as we get the full picture from Pranav and Nitin.

The webinar will be hosted on Wednesday, 12 July 2023, 17:00 SGT/HKT.

Pranav Bhavsar is the Founder of ASA Capital Management, focusing on research on consumer themes and companies operating in India or global companies that have significant exposure to India or the Indian economy.

Nitin Mangal is a SEBI registered Research Analyst with more than 10 years of experience in Indian equities. He is Pioneer of Corporate Governance and Accounting Research in Indian Market and has successfully developed a product for Institutional Investors named as “Analysis Beyond Consensus” during his association with Edelweiss Securities Ltd, Mumbai. 

• Europe has seen some remarkable energy prices in recent days with record negative electricity prices in the North Western part of the continent, while Saudi Arabia strikes again and prolongs the supply cuts into August.
• Read along in our weekly Energy Cable, where Steno Research and 3Fourteen Research share their thoughts on Energy markets. As usual, we don’t quite agree.
• At yesterday’s auction for the day-ahead German baseload electricity prices turned outright negative and we wonder if this could be a signal of deflation to come like we saw in the gas markets last fall where the short end of the curve absolutely nosedived once we realized filling the storages was not going to be a problem.