Grain > Commentary > 1-20-2023

1/20/2023

Jan 20, 2023

1/20/2023
A quiet day of two-sided trade to end the week with no market moving news or headlines. Managed money and funds are in control and appear to be trading between themselves and, essentially, the only thing supporting current price levels. We had another confirmed sale announcement this morning of 220,000 tonnes of soybeans for delivery to unknown during the 2022/23 marketing year. Trade has been defensive this week after forecasts continually increased chances of precipitation in Argentina and the radar appeared to confirm those forecasts at the mid-day point today. Last week was definitely one of the better weeks we have seen for export sales. Corn outperformed trade estimates with 1.132 mln tonnes sold and soybeans came in near the top end of the range at 986k tonnes sold. Marketing year to date, corn export sales are short of the pace needed to meet the USDA target by 252 million bushels versus 255 million bushels last week. Soybean sales are 52 million bushels short of their pace needed to meet the USDA target versus 43 million bushels last week.
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Coming off of our harvest lows, funds have built a record long position in soybean meal. After coming within spitting distance of fresh 10 year highs just over a week ago, the nearest soybean meal contract has already fallen around $50/ton off of last week’s high marks. Funds have been the only thing driving this market and have no one to unload their length onto. Almost a textbook head and shoulders pattern developing.

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1/12/2026
Jan 12, 2026
Well, the USDA report had a bit of a surprise today and not in a good way.  Not only did they increase the 2025 corn yield, from 186.0 to 186.5, they also increased Harvest Acres from 90 million to 91.3 million.  That raised the total corn production to 17.021 billion, up an additional 269 million bushels from their previous estimate.  U.S. Ending Stocks are now estimated at 2.227 bbu, vs. 2.209 in Dec.  Report trade guesses were at 1.97 bbu.
11/14/2025
Nov 14, 2025
It was USDA report day today and overall, it was bearish for both corn and beans.  Corn Yield was only reduced by .7 bpa down to 186 bpa.  The market was expecting closer to 184 bpa.  Corn production is estimated at 16.752 billion vs 16.814 billion in September.  They raised exports 100 million, which is debatable, but possible.  Ending stocks on corn were estimated at 2.154 billion bushels, which is up 44 million from September and about 29 million more than the market expected. 
9/12/2025
Sep 12, 2025
USDA report day.  Corn and beans were trading higher pre-report on thoughts of a reduction to yields.  Well....we got what we were thinking but the USDA decided to throw a twist into the mix.  The 25/26 corn yield decreased slightly less than expected by 2.1 bu to 186.7 bpa, but they gave us the largest planted acreage shift on this report in at least the last 20 years (+1.4 mil acres) spurred an increase in production to 16,814 mbu.  25/26 ending stocks were slightly lowered by 7 mbu to 2,110 mbu.