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City of Minot January building permits

– Dean Keller, RAK Homes, 3312 and 3314 23rd Ave. NW, twin homes with garages, decks, both $182,000. – William and Karen Fleming, William Patrick Fleming, 609 19th St. SE, move bathroom wall between kitchen and living room, $14,000. – Reinaldo Guitian III, 1905 Highland Dr., remodel, remove and replace part of basement bearing wall, $500. – Justin and Courtney Traeger, Groundworks Minnesota, 709 35th Ave. NE, push piers and gutter, $6,000. – Lilly Olson, Groundwork Minnesota, 104 10th Ave. NW, gutter and sump replacement, $8,000. – Jordan and Tanya Howett, TT&T ...

Futures File: Cattle market brings the heat

June Live Cattle futures were up $4.075 for the week, settling at $178.45/cwt. Which is a noteworthy level. The 200-day moving average is $179/cwt, the 100-day moving average is $178.5/cwt and the 50% retracement level is $178.4/cwt. The 50% retracement coming from the contract highs put in at $194/cwt on Sept. 15 to the lows of $162.775/cwt on Dec. 6. All three of these levels were hit today – on a Friday – with a positive close. The last three weeks of weather have been extreme for large portions of cattle-feeding country. Multiple rounds of cold, blowing snow with sprinkles ...

Futures File: China loses pop in population

A popular story making the rounds this past week was the population of China decreasing for the second year in a row. Births fell to a record low in 2023 while deaths reached a record high, and the overall population fell by just over 2 million to 1.41 billion. (The population decrease in 2022 amounted to roughly 300,000 according to Bloomberg.) A delayed recording of COVID fatalities could explain the deaths but the birth rate has been steadily declining since 2016, the same year they ended the one child policy, allowing families to have two children. Then in July of 2021, China ...

Futures FIle: USDA beats dead horse

The January WASDE and Quarterly Stocks Report was released last week, and it put what may be the final nail in the coffin for 2023-24 grain bulls. Production estimates of both corn and soybeans for the 2023 crop year were raised between .5% and 1% in total, which doesn’t sound like much, but it allows for the projected 2023/24 ending stocks of corn to remain comfortably above 2 billion bushels at 2.162 billion – a plentiful supply that will take time for demand to chew through. Demand has been good…ish with better export sales to Mexico than last year, and consumption from an ...

ND credit unions recover assets in federal dispute

BISMARCK – North Dakota credit unions will receive more than $11.9 million in recovered assets that had previously been denied by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), according to the Dakota Credit Union Association. The federal agency agreed to settle the dispute after a federal judge denied its request to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the credit unions in April 2023 in U.S. District Court in Kansas. NCUA plans to return the assets by Jan. 18. Over the past two years, the Dakota Credit Union Association has led the effort and assisted its North Dakota members in repeated ...

Futures File: Middle East gets Western

The Middle East and trouble are no strangers, but the last three months of 2023 saw an increase in turmoil and hot spots to the point of boiling over. The most obvious is the bombardment of the Gaza Strip by Israel after the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7 killed 1,200, according to Israel’s foreign ministry. Gaza’s health ministry estimates that 22,185 Palestinians have been killed since October 7. Houthi rebels based out of Yemen have been attacking ships attempting to navigate the Red Sea for the better part of two months, carrying out 20 attacks since Nov. 19, according ...