As we move to whole milk powder, whole milk

powder is one of those products that for quite a while now has been the futures have been suggesting we're going to get a rally when it's really underperformed versus expectations.

I would say whole milk powder on this one being up 4.3%.

Yes, it was a rally and it was a pretty decent one at 4.3%.

I do think their futures were looking for a little bit more than this.

They had an eight, 9% expectation on them again.

I don't think anybody's going to see it as really a disappointment, but I guess the Futures were really outpacing the actual result of this again.

is.

John, is there a specific region that you've kind of been waiting to jump into?

Well, I think the star of the show is gonna be skim milk powder once again.

Skim milk powder on this auction was up 4.3%, coming in at $1.74, and that is several auctions in a row now that skim milk has been moving higher.

In the last one, two, three, four, five, six auctions, skim milk powder has been up five of those auctions and now trading at $1.74 price.

So I think that's really gonna be the star of the show.

Whole milk powder futures were looking for about another 7.5% to 8% increase, and only got 1.1% of an increase.

So yeah, higher is higher, but this is probably the third auction in a row that whole milk powders have been looking for this big rally that just hasn't come about.

Are there different regions that kind of stick out in your mind of, "Hey, this is usually what happens this time of year," or maybe a little bit of slower for this time of year?

So John, welcome.

Thanks, Brian.

And I'm excited to be here.

What were your expectations or the market's expectations going into this auction and how did it play out today?

Sure.

I think if we just want to look at it through what were the expectations, I think the market was generally looking for some higher pricing in the powders, lower pricing in fats and cheese.

I'm not sure exactly what the market was expecting, but when we look at what we actually got from a result, skim milk powder came in negative 0.2% at an average price of about $1.67. That'll be about the same price for both Europe and New Zealand.

I think their futures were looking for about a 2% to 3% increase here.

If we move to the purchases by region, John, there seems to be a pretty good standout in there today.

Yeah, this one, I was looking at it and was like, it is very difficult to catch the rhythm of the GDT market participants.

If we really dig into here, we will see that the Middle East, who has been a pretty decent buyer on the GDT over the course of the last few months, actually was 21% lower on an event over event performance, 3% higher than last year.

When we get to Southeast Asia, they have been a standout buyer consistently this whole summer.

They were down 11% event over event and down 9% year over year.

However, when we get to China, who has been extremely lackluster this whole time, They were up 21% event over event and up 50% year over year.

So it has really been a confusing and a back and forth.

John, is there anything else that stood out to you for this GDT specifically today?