Grain > Commentary > 2-16-2023

2/16/2023

Feb 16, 2023

2/16/2023
Thursday's trade was featureless and, overall, extremely quiet for corn and soybeans.  Ranges were relatively tight and we spenting most of the day bouncing back and forth between 1-2 cents higher or lower throughout the session.  Following yesterday morning's announcement, the USDA confirmed another export sale this morning.  This sale was for 128,000 tonnes of soybeans for delivery to unknown for the 2022/23 marketing year.  Weekly export sales were decent for corn, coming in at the towards the upper end of estimates at 1.025 mln tonnes sold last week.  Soybean sales were okay at 513k tonnes but most of these old crop sales were previous sales being switched from unknown to China as the destination.  The markets have been in some very quiet trade range since the USDA published their final production numbers back in January.  Also, there's been some issues over that same timeframe with the CFTC reporting the estimated fund positions.  The day-to-day, week-to-week price action has not been reflective of how little the estimated positions have changed.  This has contributed to the market struggling to find direction.

drought-monitor.png

Read More News

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.