1/11/2024

Thursday's session was a long, slow grind and it appeared most had opted to sit on the sidelines one day ahead of the USDA report.  The price action we did see was some basic positioning trade.  For the first time since December 19, the USDA made a flash sale announcement this morning.  This confirmed sale was for 175,000 tonnes of corn for delivery to Mexico during the 2023/24 marketing year.  The only other item of note today was the weekly net export sales report and it didn't really offer us much.  Corn sales were on the low-end of expectations with 488k tonnes sold and soybeans sales were a miss at 280k tonnes.  Trade does not expect to see much of a shakeup in numbers for tomorrow's report and pre-report estimates are mostly priced in so if we do see a drop in U.S. or South American crop production from the USDA, it may not ignite the rally you expect to see.