@sdelsad/commodity-desk-daily 1.0.40 → 1.0.41

package/covered.md

@@ -15,3 +15,4 @@ Running log. Read before writing a new episode: avoid repeating material, and on
 - **Ep 11** (Mon) — *Storage, Elevation and Trade Flows*: Ep 11 — Storage, Elevation and Trade Flows: the elevator as a seller of space rather than a speculator; elevation margin versus basis-and-carry as two separate businesses; storage tariff in cents per bushel per month and shrink as a percentage; the posted bid as a queue-management tool rather than a price; worked example buying corn at 45 under Dec and selling at 15 under Mar with Mar 18 over Dec, restated against one month as a 48c basis gain less 7.5c interest and 3c shrink for 37.5c net on 3m bu; the carry belongs only to whoever has a bin (ep 3 callback); US storage capacity flat at 25.3 bn bu since 2019 against a 27.5 bn trend, on-farm 13.6 and off-farm 11.9, 80% on-farm utilisation at 1 Dec 2025 and ~5% system surplus, tightest since 1988; temporary storage as the cost that floors the basis; blending as the cheapest form change, worked example 40kt at 12.4% and 20kt at 11.2% blending to exactly 12.0% at 244 against a 250 sale for 6 USD/t gross and 3 net = 180,000 on the cargo; why the blender sets the discount; protein moisture and test weight average while aflatoxin, infestation, unapproved events and falling number do not; replacement value and the bottleneck asset as the answer to why merchants rent ships but own elevators. Pulse: Fri 21 Aug closes Dec corn 508.5 +5 (2.5-year high, +25.25 on week), Nov beans 1239.5 +3 (+47 on week), Sep meal 317.70, Sep oil 69.35, Chi Sep wheat 681.5, KC 756.25, MGE 698.25; Pro Farmer final tour corn 173.2 bu/ac and 15.344 bn bu against USDA 180.7, beans 53.3 against 52.7; GEO escalation on the Black Sea — the storage transmission: 90%+ of Russian Azov-Black Sea export capacity offline, three Novorossiysk terminals suspended, Taman since late July, Azov navigation suspended since July, one working deepwater terminal in a basin that moved 46.3 mt last season, ~140 mt harvested, exporters stopped buying, grain backing up inland and 4th-class Russian wheat at ~12,000 roubles/t against 15,000 a year ago — world price up and farmgate price down in the same crop.
 - **Ep 12** (Wed) — *Coffee: The Market*: Arabica and robusta are two different plants on two different exchanges in two different units, and on Monday one settled at 2.2 times the other. Then certified stocks: why 226,242 bags, under half a day of world consumption, can move a global market five percent in a session.
 - **Ep 13** (Fri) — *Coffee: Differentials, PTBF and Volatility*: A coffee contract does not name a price, it names a differential — and an exporter's entire business fits inside eleven cents a pound. Then price-to-be-fixed: how one trade becomes two decisions, and why fixing risk is sold as market risk and settled as credit risk.
+- **Ep 14** (Mon) — *Sugar: Two Contracts, the Switch and the Refiner*: Ep 14 — Sugar: Two Contracts, the Switch and the Refiner: raws vs whites as two screens one refining step apart (No. 11 is 112,000 lb or 50 long tons in c/lb FOB origin, No. 5 is 50 t in USD/t delivered, bridge 22.0462), white premium 133.17 USD/t on Friday; Center-South Brazil as swing supplier pricing a decision rather than a crop; ATR as the unit of that choice with CONSECANA factors 1.0495 kg ATR per kg sugar, 1.6913 per litre hydrous, 1.7651 per litre anhydrous; one tonne of ATR worth 368.87 as sugar against 264.65 as hydrous and 285.71 as anhydrous at Friday prices, sugar ahead by 104.22 or 40 percent; ethanol parity 12.60 c/lb on hydrous and 13.60 on anhydrous against a 17.56 screen, headroom 109 USD/t that must still cover mill-to-port logistics; the switch-is-spent argument, that far above parity a rally pulls no extra Brazilian tonnes and can only ration demand; two demand curves and the fuel floor, moved by the 32 percent anhydrous blend mandate, crude and the real; refiner's margin per tonne of white 520.30 less 1.06 t of raws at 410.36 less 70 refining equals 39.94, and break-even white premium 93.23 at 17.56 raws against 85.87 at 12c because melt loss is a percentage and not a fee; TRADER/ANALYST parity dialogue. Pulse: Fri 28 Aug settles Oct No.11 17.56 minus 0.63 (-3.5%), Oct No.5 520.30 minus 8.50, Sep Chi wheat 767 plus 24.25 at a three-year high, Sep beans 1276.25 plus 19.75, Sep meal 338.20 plus 8.00, Sep corn 512 plus 1.75; sugar still up ~21% on the month after a 14-month high on 18 Aug; supply cuts Brazil CS June sugar -26.3% y/y to 3.903 Mt, Thailand 26/27 9.5 Mt -15.6%, EU+UK 14.98 Mt an eleven-year low, 26/27 flipped from surplus to deficit (ISO -262 kt, Green Pool -3.2 Mt, StoneX -1.7 Mt), screen ~2c above Brazil's ~15.7 c/lb FOB cost of production; GEO/policy read: India opened a 1 Mt duty-free sugar import window to 31 Oct against a standing 100% duty, monsoon 13% below normal through 26 Aug, retail 48 to ~55 rupees/kg, the largest consumer flipping from occasional exporter to buyer, tempered by a permission not being a purchase with one forecaster at no more than 500 kt clearing.

package/feed.xml

@@ -18,6 +18,18 @@
       <title>Soft Commodity Trading</title>
       <link>https://storage.googleapis.com/podcast-audio-2647223968/index.html</link>
     </image>
+    <item>
+      <title>Ep 14 — Sugar: Two Contracts, the Switch and the Refiner</title>
+      <link>https://storage.googleapis.com/podcast-audio-2647223968/commodity-desk-daily/ep14.html</link>
+      <description><![CDATA[<p>Sugar is quoted twice, one refining step apart, and the gap between the two screens is what the market pays for refining. Then Brazil's mills, where supply is a daily decision between food and fuel, and ethanol parity is the price at which that decision flips.</p><p><a href="https://storage.googleapis.com/podcast-audio-2647223968/commodity-desk-daily/ep14.html">Read this episode, with the charts, the glossary and the quiz &rarr;</a></p>]]></description>
+      <itunes:summary>Sugar is quoted twice, one refining step apart, and the gap between the two screens is what the market pays for refining. Then Brazil's mills, where supply is a daily decision between food and fuel, and ethanol parity is the price at which that decision flips.
+
+Read this episode: https://storage.googleapis.com/podcast-audio-2647223968/commodity-desk-daily/ep14.html</itunes:summary>
+      <enclosure url="https://storage.googleapis.com/podcast-audio-2647223968/commodity-desk-daily/ep14.mp3" length="9500588" type="audio/mpeg"/>
+      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://storage.googleapis.com/podcast-audio-2647223968/commodity-desk-daily/ep14.mp3</guid>
+      <pubDate>Mon, 31 Aug 2026 05:10:00 GMT</pubDate>
+      <itunes:duration>791</itunes:duration>
+    </item>
     <item>
       <title>Ep 13 — Coffee: Differentials, PTBF and Volatility</title>
       <link>https://storage.googleapis.com/podcast-audio-2647223968/commodity-desk-daily/ep13.html</link>

package/glossary.md

@@ -5,12 +5,14 @@ Units, conventions and desk expressions, accumulated as the show introduces them
 - **45Z** — the US clean fuel production credit, one of the two policy levers that sets American soybean oil demand  _(ep 8)_
 - **abandonment** — planted area never harvested for grain, lost to drought, flood or a switch to silage  _(ep 6)_
 - **ABCD** — the four historic majors, Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus  _(ep 2)_
+- **anhydrous ethanol** — near-water-free ethanol blended into petrol under a mandate, taking 1.7651 kg of ATR per litre  _(ep 14)_
 - **arabica** — the high-altitude coffee species, aromatic and acidic, lower-yielding and more fragile, priced on ICE in New York  _(ep 12)_
 - **arb** — the full economics of moving a cargo, buy price plus freight and costs against the sale  _(ep 2)_
 - **arb window** — the period during which a route's economics work, opening and shutting on freight, differentials and FX rather than on flat price  _(ep 11)_
 - **asset-heavy** — owning the physical chain, which converts a volatile trading margin into a steadier toll  _(ep 2)_
 - **asset-light** — renting elevators, terminals and plants rather than owning them  _(ep 2)_
 - **at** — the small word that introduces the offer side (462 bid, at 462 and a half)  _(ep 1)_
+- **ATR** — Acucar Total Recuperavel or total recoverable sugar, the kilos of sugar recoverable from a tonne of cane, the unit in which Brazilian growers are paid and the unit in which a mill compares sugar against ethanol  _(ep 14)_
 - **B50** — a blending mandate requiring 50 percent biodiesel in the diesel pool, the level Indonesia moved to in 2026  _(ep 9)_
 - **bag (coffee)** — 60 kg, how the coffee trade counts volume  _(ep 1)_
 - **balance sheet** — the one-page supply and demand statement for one crop and one marketing year, built so that supply minus use equals ending stocks and the page closes  _(ep 7)_
@@ -33,6 +35,7 @@ Units, conventions and desk expressions, accumulated as the show introduces them
 - **carry market (contango)** — a curve with later months above nearer ones, the market pays for storage  _(ep 3)_
 - **carry-in** — stocks left over from the previous season, the starting point of a balance sheet  _(ep 2)_
 - **carryout** — ending stocks, the desk's one-word name for what is left at the end of the marketing year  _(ep 7)_
+- **Center-South** — the Brazilian sugarcane region running from Sao Paulo through Minas Gerais and Goias, about 90 percent of the national crop and the swing supplier of the world sugar market  _(ep 14)_
 - **cents per bushel** — Chicago grain quoting unit, 4.39 dollars per bushel is spoken four thirty-nine  _(ep 1)_
 - **certified stock** — coffee sampled, graded and stamped as deliverable against the futures contract and held in an exchange-licensed warehouse, the deliverable float rather than world inventory  _(ep 12)_
 - **CFR** — cost and freight, the seller pays the voyage to a named destination but risk still passes at loading  _(ep 4)_
@@ -59,6 +62,7 @@ Units, conventions and desk expressions, accumulated as the show introduces them
 - **demand-to-supply ratio** — the Baltic measure of tonne-mile demand growth against fleet growth, above 1.0 when cargo is outrunning ships  _(ep 10)_
 - **demurrage** — the penalty owed when a vessel is held beyond the agreed laytime  _(ep 2)_
 - **despatch** — the reward paid when loading beats laytime, customarily half the demurrage rate  _(ep 4)_
+- **destination refinery** — a standalone refinery at the consuming end that buys raws on the water and sells whites locally, earning the white premium less its costs rather than a crop margin  _(ep 14)_
 - **differential** — the premium or discount to a named futures month, as in November plus 80, the negotiated part of a physical quote  _(ep 1)_
 - **differential (basis)** — the premium or discount to a named futures month, quoted as plus 80 or minus 20  _(ep 1)_
 - **discount schedule** — the published table of price deductions for grain outside a contract's grade limits, and the raw material of every blending trade  _(ep 11)_
@@ -71,6 +75,7 @@ Units, conventions and desk expressions, accumulated as the show introduces them
 - **durum** — the pasta wheat, a separate species with its own thin market  _(ep 5)_
 - **elevation margin** — the toll an elevator earns for taking grain in, conditioning it and loading it out, separate from any gain on the basis  _(ep 11)_
 - **ethanol grind** — the rate at which ethanol plants consume corn, which slows when the plant margin turns negative and removes corn demand in steps  _(ep 6)_
+- **ethanol parity** — the sugar price at which a mill earns the same per unit of ATR from sugar as from ethanol, the level at which its production decision flips  _(ep 14)_
 - **EUDR** — the EU deforestation regulation, which from December 2026 requires proof that a shipment's land was not deforested and which splits origin differentials into compliant and non-compliant  _(ep 13)_
 - **export levy** — a tax charged on a commodity leaving the country, used in Indonesia both to discourage exports of crude palm oil and to fund the domestic blending subsidy  _(ep 9)_
 - **falling number** — the sprout-damage test, a low number demotes milling wheat to feed wheat  _(ep 5)_
@@ -107,6 +112,8 @@ Units, conventions and desk expressions, accumulated as the show introduces them
 - **hexane** — the solvent used to extract the last of the oil from the flaked bean, and a real line in the conversion cost  _(ep 8)_
 - **hit** — your bid was taken by a seller  _(ep 1)_
 - **hit the bid** — to sell into someone else's bid  _(ep 1)_
+- **hydrous ethanol** — roughly 95 percent ethanol sold directly at the pump for flex-fuel cars in Brazil, taking 1.6913 kg of ATR per litre  _(ep 14)_
+- **ICUMSA** — the colour scale for refined sugar, lower being whiter, with the London No. 5 contract requiring 45 ICUMSA or better  _(ep 14)_
 - **implied disappearance** — use derived by subtraction rather than by measurement, the technique that produces the residual lines of a balance sheet  _(ep 7)_
 - **inclusion rate** — the share of a single ingredient in a feed ration, capped by nutrition and by anti-nutritional factors  _(ep 6)_
 - **Incoterms** — the standard three-letter trade terms that allocate cost and risk between buyer and seller  _(ep 4)_
@@ -124,17 +131,21 @@ Units, conventions and desk expressions, accumulated as the show introduces them
 - **limit move** — an exchange-set maximum daily price change, trading pauses beyond it  _(ep 3)_
 - **line-up** — the queue of vessels waiting to load at a port, a key driver of origin basis  _(ep 2)_
 - **load-out capacity** — how fast an elevator can ship grain out, the lever that decides whether a full house is a crisis or a rotation  _(ep 11)_
+- **long ton** — 2,240 lb, the imperial weight unit the sugar No. 11 contract is still sized in at 50 long tons a lot  _(ep 14)_
 - **lot** — one futures contract, 5,000 bushels for Chicago grains, the unit desks count positions in  _(ep 1)_
 - **managed money** — speculative funds reported as non-commercial in exchange positioning data, which trade direction rather than physical  _(ep 13)_
 - **marketing year** — the accounting year a crop is measured in, September to August for US corn and soybeans and June to May for US wheat  _(ep 7)_
 - **Matif milling wheat (EBM)** — the Paris contract, 50 tonnes a lot quoted in euros per tonne and delivered into Rouen and Dunkirk  _(ep 5)_
 - **meal contract** — CBOT soybean meal, 100 short tons, quoted in dollars per short ton  _(ep 8)_
+- **melt loss** — the sugar lost between raws in and whites out, roughly six percent, which makes a refiner's break-even white premium a function of the raw price rather than a constant  _(ep 14)_
 - **metric tonne** — 2,204.6 lb, the grain trading weight unit outside the US  _(ep 1)_
 - **month codes** — F G H J K M N Q U V X Z for January through December, the Z is December  _(ep 1)_
 - **NASS** — USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, the body running the surveys behind the published numbers  _(ep 7)_
 - **natural process** — coffee dried with the fruit still attached, giving a sweeter, heavier and more variable cup  _(ep 12)_
 - **net length** — a fund category's long positions less its short positions, the number that says how much of a rally is positioning  _(ep 13)_
 - **new crop** — the marketing year about to begin, priced by the contract months that follow the coming harvest  _(ep 7)_
+- **No. 11** — the ICE raw cane sugar futures contract, 112,000 lb quoted in US cents per pound FOB at origin, and the world price of raw sugar  _(ep 14)_
+- **No. 5** — the ICE London white sugar futures contract, 50 tonnes quoted in US dollars per tonne delivered, and the world price of refined sugar  _(ep 14)_
 - **nomination** — formally naming the performing vessel under a cargo contract  _(ep 4)_
 - **NOPA** — the National Oilseed Processors Association, whose monthly published crush figure makes US soybean crush a measured line rather than an inferred one  _(ep 8)_
 - **notice of readiness (NOR)** — the master's formal declaration that the vessel has arrived and is ready, it starts the laytime clock  _(ep 4)_
@@ -155,6 +166,7 @@ Units, conventions and desk expressions, accumulated as the show introduces them
 - **planted acres** — area sown, the number that moves on farmer decisions and USDA area surveys  _(ep 6)_
 - **point** — one hundredth of a cent per pound, how softs desks count moves  _(ep 1)_
 - **point (softs)** — one hundredth of a cent per pound, so up 300 points means up 3 cents  _(ep 1)_
+- **polarisation (pol)** — the sucrose purity of a sugar measured by the rotation of polarised light and expressed in degrees, the basis on which raw sugar is priced and settled  _(ep 14)_
 - **pollination** — the roughly one-week corn window in mid-July in the northern hemisphere after which the ear count is fixed and no forecast can change it  _(ep 6)_
 - **price assessment** — a published daily price built by surveying brokers and exporters, used where no futures contract exists  _(ep 5)_
 - **price-to-be-fixed (PTBF)** — a physical contract where quantity, quality, shipment and differential are agreed now and the futures price is set later  _(ep 13)_
@@ -163,6 +175,7 @@ Units, conventions and desk expressions, accumulated as the show introduces them
 - **putting on the crush** — buying bean futures and selling meal and oil futures against them in a 10-11-9 lot ratio, which fixes the processing margin  _(ep 8)_
 - **quality basis** — the spread between the grade you own and the grade the futures contract delivers  _(ep 5)_
 - **ration** — the formulated feed mix a mill grinds, in which every ingredient carries an inclusion limit and a substitution price against the others  _(ep 6)_
+- **raws** — raw cane sugar, the crystalline product a cane mill exports before refining, traded at 96 degrees polarisation  _(ep 14)_
 - **receiving capacity** — how fast an elevator can take grain in, in bushels or tonnes per hour, a different constraint from how much it can hold  _(ep 11)_
 - **renewable diesel** — hydrotreated vegetable oil or HVO, a drop-in diesel chemically identical to fossil diesel and not limited by a blend wall, unlike FAME  _(ep 9)_
 - **replacement value** — what it would cost to buy back today what you have just sold, the test of whether a price was genuinely good  _(ep 11)_
@@ -193,6 +206,7 @@ Units, conventions and desk expressions, accumulated as the show introduces them
 - **stocks-to-use** — ending stocks divided by total use, the market's tension gauge  _(ep 2)_
 - **storage tariff** — the published charge for commercial storage, quoted in cents per bushel per month or per day, or in dollars per tonne per month  _(ep 11)_
 - **substitution spread** — the price gap between two competing vegetable oils, which sets the point at which a refiner reformulates from one to the other  _(ep 9)_
+- **sugar mix** — the share of a mill's recoverable sugars turned into sugar rather than ethanol, bounded above by the plant's crystallisation capacity  _(ep 14)_
 - **Supramax** — a dry bulk vessel of roughly 50,000 to 60,000 dwt, normally carrying its own cranes, working minor bulks and shorter legs  _(ep 10)_
 - **temporary storage** — ground piles, bunkers and bags used when permanent capacity is full, cheap per bushel to build and expensive per bushel in spoilage and rehandling  _(ep 11)_
 - **terminal elevator** — large storage at a port, river or rail hub whose business is blending, load-out speed and access rather than farm origination  _(ep 11)_
@@ -202,11 +216,13 @@ Units, conventions and desk expressions, accumulated as the show introduces them
 - **ticker** — the short screen code a contract is spoken by, ZW wheat, ZC corn, ZS soybeans, ZM meal, ZL oil, KC coffee, SB sugar, CT cotton  _(ep 3)_
 - **time charter** — hiring the vessel itself for a period at a price in dollars per day, with the charterer taking speed, weather, port delay and usually fuel  _(ep 10)_
 - **time charter equivalent (TCE)** — a voyage's economics restated as dollars per day, which is how a shipowner compares one employment against another  _(ep 10)_
+- **toll refining** — refining someone else's raws for a fee per tonne, which converts the white premium from a trading position into a fixed margin  _(ep 14)_
 - **total supply** — carry-in plus production plus imports, the top block of a balance sheet  _(ep 7)_
 - **total use** — domestic use plus exports, the bottom block of a balance sheet  _(ep 7)_
 - **trade average** — the published mean of analysts' pre-report estimates, and therefore the expectation already contained in the price  _(ep 7)_
 - **trend yield** — the yield a crop would produce on normal weather, the baseline against which a weather premium is measured  _(ep 6)_
 - **variation margin** — the daily cash settlement of a position mark to market, paid the same day  _(ep 3)_
+- **VHP** — very high polarisation raw sugar of around 99 degrees, the grade Brazil exports and which trades at a premium to the No. 11 screen  _(ep 14)_
 - **voyage charter** — hiring a vessel to move a stated cargo between named ports for a price in dollars per tonne, with the owner carrying the voyage and delay risk  _(ep 10)_
 - **war-risk premium** — an insurance surcharge on a vessel's hull value for sailing into a conflict zone, quoted as a percentage  _(ep 2)_
 - **WASDE** — the USDA monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report  _(ep 1)_
@@ -216,6 +232,7 @@ Units, conventions and desk expressions, accumulated as the show introduces them
 - **weather premium** — the gap between where a crop trades and where it would trade at trend yield, the price of a distribution of outcomes rather than of a forecast  _(ep 6)_
 - **weather working day** — a laytime day that counts only when weather permits cargo work  _(ep 4)_
 - **whisper number** — the expectation the market is actually trading into a report, which can sit away from the published trade average  _(ep 7)_
+- **white premium** — the London white sugar price less the New York raw sugar price converted to the same unit, which is what the market pays for the act of refining  _(ep 14)_
 - **work** — leave an order resting with a broker  _(ep 1)_
 - **work an order** — leave an order resting at your price and wait  _(ep 1)_
 - **workable** — the quoted price is negotiable  _(ep 1)_

package/package.json

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 {
   "name": "@sdelsad/commodity-desk-daily",
-  "version": "1.0.40",
-  "description": "Soft Commodity Trading - Ep 13: Coffee: Differentials, PTBF and Volatility (Gemini narration)",
+  "version": "1.0.41",
+  "description": "Soft Commodity Trading - Ep 14: Sugar: Two Contracts, the Switch and the Refiner",
   "license": "CC-BY-4.0",
   "keywords": [
     "podcast",