Markets Bounce as energy heats up ags 12/22/25

(CHICAGO, IL) December 22, 2025

The markets are moving today less on spreadsheets and more on headlines, and in a holiday-thinned trade that seems to have mattered more than usual. With liquidity light and desks half-staffed, geopolitical ripples are casting longer shadows. A softer dollar has quietly improved the optics for US exports, but the bigger story is that uncertainty itself is back in the driver’s seat. When gold has run to new all time highs and crude is finding a bid, it suggests, to me, that risk is being repriced higher.

In grains, the Black Sea is once again the fault line. Fresh attacks near Ukrainian export infrastructure have reminded traders that the world’s cheapest wheat does not move freely by accident. Global supplies look comfortable on paper, but logistics are the choke point, and insurance rates, port access, and freight behavior is mattering more with both Russia and Ukraine firing on merchant vessels each are accusing the other of employing in their war. Wheat is reacting first, but the ripple extends into vegetable oils through sunflower oil substitution, lending background support to the entire oilseed complex. This is less a demand story, than a fragility story, and the market is pricing it in.

Corn continues to be the steadiest ship in the grain fleet. Ethanol demand remains solid, export interest has not rolled over, and usage is quietly doing the work that prices need it to do. Soybeans remain more conflicted, pulled between South American weather optimism and the policy-driven gravity of the oils market. Soy oil is trading like a political commodity, sensitive to impending biofuel rules to be released for public comment in the near future and feedstock debates, while meal remains grounded in global feed demand and protein availability.

Livestock is telling a different story though. Tight cattle supplies are asserting themselves again, with placement data reinforcing what has been a longer-term trend higher in prices, even if holiday cash trade slows things temporarily. Hogs are finding seasonal footing as cutouts improve, though holiday markets have seen some volatility. Underneath it all, energy is lending quiet support. In addition to Russian tankers being fired on now additionally in the Mediterranean, Venezuelan crude enforcement actions have put risk premium back into oil, which in turn reinforces the floor under biofuels and row crops. In short, this is a market being moved by chokepoints and policy more than acres and yields, and in thin holiday markets, awareness matters as much as conviction.

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