Grain > Commentary > 5-17-2021

5/17/2021

May 17, 2021

5/17/2021
Corn and soybeans both finish Monday mixed with the front month firming after good weekly export inspection figures.  Corn inspections were seen at 1.892 mln tonnes last week, towards the upper end of expectations.  Soybeans and wheat inspections both out performed estimates with 309k tonnes of beans and 659k tonnes of wheat inspected.  The USDA had more 8am sales announcements of new crop corn this morning with 1.7mln tonnes to China and 128k tonnes to Mexico.  That brings the total US new crop corn sales to china to 268 mln bushels, that we know of.  April soybean crush numbers came in well below the trade estimates, with 160.31 mln bushels crushed vs the average estimate of 168.74 mln bu.  Throughout Thursday and Friday last week, funds liquidated an estimated 75,000 corn and 43,000 soybean positions.  The market was feeling some pressure from what is expected to be another vault forward in planting progress in this week's crop progress report and the increasing chances of good precipitation across the corn belt over the next two weeks.  New crop values may struggle to achieve big gains in the short term, especially corn, with many analysts feeling that the USDA may have undershot the corn acreage number by 3 to 4 million acres.  Locally, our forecast looks like we're having a short spring and heading straight for summer. 

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11/14/2025
Nov 14, 2025
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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.