9/5/2023

Sep 05, 2023


A sluggish start to the week for corn and soybeans in some of the lightest volume trade we've seen in 2023 so far. Corn managed to finish the day 1-4 cents higher after some late session buying. Soybeans were unable to hold onto higher trade early and slipped into the red around mid-day. Beans finished mixed with 1-4 cent losses out to the July 2024 contract and 1-5 higher from August 2024 and beyond. This is some typical price action following seasonal trends ahead of fall. Fundamentally, it is just plain hard to find buyers with harvest only a few weeks out but this should be expected. The USDA announced the sale of 251,000 tonnes of soybeans to for delivery to unknown during the 2023/24 marketing year. The assumption is always that these announcements should be bullish but total sales volume for the 2023/24 year is very poor compared 2022/23 volumes at this same time last year. Weekly export inspections came in as expected with 481k tonnes of corn and 379k tonnes of soybeans shipped last week. With Brazil looking continue producing at record acres and yields with a cheaper availability, the U.S. export opportunities will be limited unless some sort of issue in South America develops.

December Weekly Continuous Chart: Following seasonal trends, we are looking for December corn to trade down to the 450’0 area, with potential to go as low as 430’0, using this falling-wedge-like pattern. This is a spot to look for funds and specs to re-own corn.

Read More News

Aug 12, 2025
The USDA report today didn't treat the corn market very well.  Both corn acres and yield were higher the result has corn carryout over 2.1 billion bushels.  Corn yield was pegged at 188.8 bpa vs an estimate of 184.29 bpa.  How high is 188.8?  Well…the previous record was 179.3.  Planted corn acres were put at 97.3 million.  Total corn production is estimated at 16.742 billion bushels, which is 763 million more than the report estimates.
May 12, 2025
News broke Sunday that the USA and China have agreed to ease tensions and lower tariffs.  The US is lowering tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to 30%.  China is lowering their import tariffs from 125% to 10%.  Talks will resume in the coming weeks.  This news had stocks, grains and oil higher overnight. Then of course we had a USDA grain report come out at 11:00 this morning.  That was also a bit friendly.
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.