3/1/2021

Corn and soybeans were both higher at the overnight open but were unable to hold onto those gains throughout the day session.  With the percentage of old crop grain already sold by the US farmer, the direction of our market is based on the fund activity.  Not much reason to today's down move other than a lack of buying interest from spec and fund money.  The beginning of a new month had trade expecting to see the funds return to the market.  StoneX updated their Brazil crop production forecasts, seeing the beans at 133.5 million tonnes total, which is a .7 mln tonne increase.  They did, however, lower the brazil corn production forecast 1.7 mln tonnes, down to 108.5 mln tonnes.   Weekly export inspections were solid, with soybeans coming in above the top estimate at 879k tonnes (400-800k tonnes est.) and corn bouncing back from a poor showing last week and putting up its biggest number of the marketing year at 1.6 million tonnes (1.15-1.75 mln tonnes est.).  Current export sales totals for corn at 2.32 billion bushels, which is 89% of the 2.6 billion bushels forecasted by the USDA.  The USDA forecasted 2.25 billion bushels of bean sales and booking are already total 2.2 billion bushels.  The USDA will likely have to increase their export figures which will lower our carry outs further, pending no other changes.