3/1/2023

Soybeans started the session in the green and steadily traded higher throughout the day, recovering 10-15 cents of its recent 60-cent downfall over the past week. After setting some fresh lows for the move this morning, corn stabilized, and was able reverse into higher trade on the front end, picking up 6 cents on the May contract and 4 cents on July. September 2023 and further out ended the day fractionally lower. While the recent sell-off in futures may look bad on the surface, there are some good things that come with it. Globally, U.S. corn has gone from the most expensive to the cheapest and it has already brought a bid to the PNW rail. We are looking for some sale confirmations from the USDA between now and the end of next week. At the least, corn appears to have slowed the bleeding today. With the slight improvement in cash basis and an oversold board, a quick recovery for cash corn into $6.25-6.30 area is more than doable. Weekly ethanol showed a decline in production of 26,000 barrels/day to 1.0 bpd and stocks decreased 813,000 barrels to 24.78 mln bbls.

Corn extended its 6-month range to the downside but appears to have found a bid. Upside potential will remain limited going into Spring unless a larger problem arises in South America or we have a delayed planting issue in the states.