Grain > Commentary > 2-14-2024

2/14/2024

Feb 14, 2024

The markets offered no love on Valentine's Day. Corn and soybeans broke to the downside with what appears to be the beginning of another leg lower on the charts. Historically, soybeans have never spent much time trading in the $11 range and move quickly to either $10 or $12. Trade is expecting tomorrow's Ag outlook forum to provide a bearish overtone on the market. This report really shouldn't carry the weight that it does but it's published at a time during the year that is typically quiet and there's not much else to trade. We should expect to see a decrease in corn and an increase in soybean acres with trend-line yields plugged in. This will forecast some large 2024/25 ending stocks. Weekly ethanol production increased by 50k barrels/day to 1.083 mln bbls. Ethanol stocks also increased week-to-week from 24.8 mln to 25.8 mln barrels. Ethanol is now running 75 million bushels ahead of the pace needed to meet the USDA forecasted use of corn.

Corn futures came within 3 cents of completing a complete retracement back to the breakout (4.19) of our corn bull market that occurred in December 2020.

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