2/6/2024

Another uneventful trading session as the market continues to chop.  Corn ranged from 3 higher to 4 lower throughout the day.  Soybeans featured some excitedment early in the session, trading to 9 cents higher before fading back and finishing 1-3 cents higher.  There were no notable headlines or USDA reports today but we did get the full trade estimates for Thursday's WASDE report.  Analysts do not foresee much of a shake up in the U.S. crop balance sheets and expect a small cut in corn ending stocks and a small increase in soybeans ending stocks.  What will be given some consideration from trade is what the USDA does with production in South America.  In typical fashion, private analysts have been much quicker to cut the Brazil soybean crop down over the past few months while the USDA has taken the slower approach.  Analysts are looking for the USDA to reduce Brazil soy production from 157.0 to 153.15 million tonnes and corn from 127.0 to 124.32.  These numbers would need to go sub-150 and -120 over the next few reports to wake up the market.