1/19/2024

A solid effort was made for a small run higher in corn and soybeans to end the week.  Throughout the overnight session and the first half of the day trade, corn and soybeans had the look of trying to reverse higher out of the short-term trends but the finish left something to be desired.  The USDA made a flash sale announcement this morning for 297,000 tonnes of soybeans for delivery to China during the 2023/24 marketing year.  Trade was also given some confidence to hit the buy button following a strong weekly export sales report.  Corn sales slightly outperformed trade expectations with 1.251 mln tonnes of corn sold last week.  Soybeans were on the upper end of expectations with 781k tonnes sold.  This was exactly what we needed following a couple short holiday weeks that included some less-than-impressive sales.  It should be expected that any type of significant rally will be met with some serious selling from the farmer and basis will get defensive in a hurry.  March corn spreads tightened even further today and it appeared some corn export business may finally be getting completed.