1/29/2024

Jan 29, 2024


The market offered little to get excited about on Monday.  The only fresh headline we had was soybean imports into the U.S. starting a couple months earlier than usual but it was enough for the managed money crowd to go forward with another round of shorting grains and grain spreads.  After tightening to a nickel carry, the March:May soybean spread is back out to 10 cents within a couple sessions.  We also saw a fresh round of 8-month lows on most active soybean contracts.  Weekly export inspection totals were mid-range for both corn and soybeans with 902k tonnes of corn and 890k tonnes of soybeans shipped last week.  Soybean shipment pace slipped further and is now 68 million bushels behind the USDA target versus 53 million bushels behind the prior week.  Corn shipment pace added a little surplus, now 18 million bushels ahead of their required pace versus 17 million last week.  There was some corn export business done last week and corn has a decent shot at hitting the USDA forecast but the concerning part for corn is that while our futures market continues to drive lower, basis has not improved.

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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.
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.  
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...