Grain > Commentary > 4-3-2024

4/3/2024

Apr 03, 2024

A nice bounce back in the grains following Tuesday's lower markets. Corn and soybeans were able to recapture most of their losses from the prior session but trade has returned below the moving averages we were counting on as support levels. We failed to rally further on a mostly friendly planting intentions report and the bulls will be looking for the USDA to offer up some friendly numbers on the crop balance sheets in the WASDE next week. I would expect to see the USDA to raise corn usage for both exports and ethanol. The concern for the market going into April has been soil moisture following a mostly open winter but the past 10 days have brought us a nice boost just ahead of spring planting. With full planting and growing seasons ahead of us, current new crop levels have better support and our big risk is old crop pricing. It is important to be extremely diligent in pricing this year and, unless we get some type of risk factor that materializes, seasonal trends will provide the best clue as to what our market potential is.

A nice consolidation pattern forming in corn to fuel a breakout with our WASDE report next week. Fresh highs for this move definitely attainable on a friendly report.

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3/31/2025
Mar 31, 2025
USDA reported corn planting acres at 95.326 million acres of corn, which would be up a little more than 5% from 2024's final number and the second highest March figure of the last ten years behind only 2020's estimate of 96.99 mil acres.  US corn stocks as of March 1st were seen at 81.51 billion bushels, which was exactly what the trade had expected and was down just over 2% from March 1 of 2024.  USDA said farmers intended to plant 83.495 million acres of soybeans, which would be down about 4% from last year and was just a hair smaller than what the trade was looking for.  March 1 soybean stocks were pegged at 1.91 billion bu's, which again was nearly exactly as the trade had expected, and was up 3.5% compared to March 1, 2024.
3/11/2025
Mar 11, 2025
The monthly USDA WASDE report was today and it was about as boring as it can get.  The USDA took the month off leaving corn and beans carryouts unchanged.  Corn remains at 1.540 billion bushels and beans at 380 million bushels.  World ending stocks were slightly lowered on both corn and beans.  World corn was pegged at 288.94 million tonnes vs 290.3 million tonnes previously.  World beans were pegged at 121.4 million tonnes vs 124.3 million tonnes previously.  All of the South American crop production estimates were also left unchanged.  
8/30/2024
Aug 30, 2024
Corn picks up 10 cents and soybeans improve just over 25 cents on the week to go into the holiday weekend on a positive note.  Soybean export sales have picked up the pace in a big way.  At the end of last week, sales...