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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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. 
8/21/2025
Aug 21, 2025
Today the market ran higher on rumors for positive SRE announcements coming soon.  Bean oil was up over $2.  Beans finished the day up 20 cents at 10.56 Nov futures.  There is a chance we could make a run at the 10.74 Nov highs from back in June.  If we get there, I am a seller.  Bean basis remains in the garbage, so a run higher in futures doesn't help that either.  We still don't have a trade deal, so I think any rally is short lived at this time.