Grain > Commentary > 1-8-2024

1/8/2024

Jan 08, 2024

The markets were off to a rocky start to begin the week of our final production report. Since the completion of harvest, wheat had been the lone bright spot for U.S. export business but rumors began brewing over the weekend that a portion of these extra wheat sales were now getting canceled along with some soybean sales. Given current market conditions, the rumors were all that was needed for trade to continue lower. After hanging steady overnight, the 8:30 opening bell brought some heavy selling along with it. Corn trickled into some fresh 3-year lows while soybeans look like they will test support at the trendline ranging from the Covid lows to the May 23 lows at some point this week. Weekly export inspections for corn were solid last week and near the high side of expectations at 857k tonnes. Last week's soybean shipments underwhelmed and missed their trading range to the low side at 675k tonnes shipped. Shipment pace for soybeans continues to tumble, falling from 36 million bushels short last week to 57 million bushels shy of the USDA target this week. Corn shipments gained some ground, flipping from 5 million bushels short of the USDA target to a 3-million-bushel surplus.

Corn broke out to the bottom side today, taking out an 8 month trendline. Will need some major influence on the market to recover, at this point.

Read More News

3/31/2025
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.
3/11/2025
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.  
8/30/2024
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...