5/11/2021

Turnaround Tuesdays have become almost routine.  Old crop lead the way in an impressive bounce back after yesterday's liquidation.  July beans set a new contract high at 1625'4 and May closed at 1637'4, above a resistance point on the chart at 1630'0 from early July, 2013.  USDA announced another new crop corn export sale to China of 680k tonnes (27 mln bu) this morning.  Over the past 2 days, China has purchased 93.7 mln bu of new crop corn and canceled 13.4 mln bu of old crop.  China is rolling corn purchases into the new marketing year, most likely because they cannot logistically receive the volume of corn they had purchased from us.  Crop progress for planting was reported at 67% complete for corn (+21% from previous week, 52% average) and 42% for beans (+22% from week prior, 22% average).  Tomorrow is report day and I don't expect see much change for new crop numbers, only what is affected by any changes in old crop figures.  This incredibly fast planting pace we are seeing is due to general dryness/drought throughout the corn belt and I suggest being prepared to see corn acres estimates increase.  Biggest surprise today was the weakness on Wall Street not spilling over to soybeans and corn.  As of 2:00pm, the Dow was about 500 points lower on the day.