Perspective: Mid-Day Commentary for May 14

By: Mike Castle, Market Intelligence - Fertilizer Analyst

Thu, 14 May 2026, 16:57

May 14 – The Nasdaq and S&P 500 are carving out fresh record highs yet again at midday, with the tech sector finding fresh support from the U.S./China Summit in Beijing. The announcement of the U.S. clearing sales of Nvidia’s H200 chips to select Chinese buyers has driven the stock market’s largest company by market cap, Nvidia, to another fresh all-time high today, up roughly 4.2% on the day at the time of writing. China has reportedly agreed to buy 200 Boeing aircraft as well, though the commodity sector is still waiting for some excitement of its own, with nothing yet announced as of writing. The VIX has cooled to its lowest of the week, hovering around the 17.7 level. The dollar is adding to weekly gains, up another 0.35% on the day to trade around 98.8, a two-week high. Treasuries are narrowly in the red at midday, with 10-year yields trading just below 4.45% and 2-year yields trading just above 3.98%. Crude oil has traded both sides of unchanged today but hovers right around it now, with nearby WTI just above $100.90/barrel. The ags are seeing a major selloff amid the lack of Chinese purchase announcements thus far, with soybeans leading the way down—more detail on that below.

First-time claims for unemployment benefits rose to 211k in the week ending May 9^th, slightly above the average trade estimate of 205k but still relatively modest compared to recent history. The week prior was also revised down slightly to 199k from the 200k initially reported; this means we just saw two consecutive weeks of sub-200k first-time jobless claims for the first time in over two years, highlighting the more resilient than expected U.S. labor market. Continuing claims rose to 1.782 million, slightly below the expected 1.790 million, while the week prior was revised lower to 1.758 million. The four-week moving average ticked slightly higher to 203.75k, up from a downwardly revised 203k in the week prior.

Headline retail sales jumped 4.87% year-over-year in April, the most since August of last year. In month-over-month terms, that was a 0.5% increase, matching analyst expectations and representing a sharp decline from the 1.6% month-over-month uptick in March. Stripping out gas and autos, U.S. retail sales still climbed by 0.5% month-over-month, representing a slight drop from the upwardly revised 0.7% monthly rise seen in March.

Weekly ‘25/’26 soybean export sales set a new marketing year low for the second consecutive week, coming in at only 3.8 million bushels, with Indonesia the top destination. The combination of a lack of headlines regarding fresh Chinese purchase commitments thus far at the Trump/Xi summit, existing managed money length, and another round of weak hard data is keeping soybean futures in an ugly selloff at midday. There were 3.0 million bushels of new crop (‘26/’27) soybean sales, though cumulative commitments of new crop soybeans remain less than one-third of where they were at this time last year and represent the weakest pace at this point in at least the last 13 years. USDA is calling for a 100 million bushel year-over-year rebound in U.S. soybean exports to 1.630 billion. Without Chinese demand, this target feels a bit overly optimistic, so the trade will continue monitoring developments from the meeting in Beijing until it wraps up tomorrow.

At the same time, don’t forget to keep this in context of the longer-term shift away from exports in favor of more domestic use in the U.S. soybean market, with supportive EPA policy and huge crush margins underpinning strong domestic demand. USDA’s moves on Tuesday’s WASDE reflected this, cutting current marketing year exports by 10 million bushels while raising crush by 20 million. They expect to see soy crush rise another 120 million bushels year-over-year to another fresh all-time high of 2.75 billion bushels. As can be seen in the first graphic below, this is now over 60% of total U.S. soybean demand. From my own personal perspective, I expect ‘26/’27 to eventually end up continuing the trend reflected in this graphic, with crush likely surpassing USDA’s initial target while exports fall below. This is driven primarily by the advent of soy-based biofuels. As shown in the second graphic below, ‘26/’27 represents the first year on record that biofuel will become the largest demand category of U.S. soybean oil.

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