Grain > Commentary > 5-25-2023

5/25/2023

May 25, 2023

The bears and bulls struggled to maintain direction today.  Corn and soybeans traded some nice ranges away from either size of unchanged, giving most a chance at positioning no matter their bias.  There is finally a small buzz going around the market with some concern about moisture conditions.  Funds had recently flipped short but have worked themselves closer to a neutral position as we are now one day out from an extended weekend.  The market has built a slightly bullish sentiment based solely on weather as domestic and export demand for corn continues to dwindle away.  Weekly export sales were within expectations with net cancellations for corn (75k tonnes) and wheat (45k tonnes) and net sales of 115k tonnes of soybeans.  There was a nice bump in bean meal sales with last week's sale announcement to Poland.  Marketing year to date, corn sales are short of the pace needed to hit the USDA target by 132 million bushels versus 108 million last week.  Soybean sales are short by 100 million bushels versus 71 million last week.  Actual shipment pace for corn is short by 107 mln bushels and soybean shipments are 50 million bushels ahead but the gap is shrinking.

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11/14/2025
Nov 14, 2025
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9/12/2025
Sep 12, 2025
USDA report day.  Corn and beans were trading higher pre-report on thoughts of a reduction to yields.  Well....we got what we were thinking but the USDA decided to throw a twist into the mix.  The 25/26 corn yield decreased slightly less than expected by 2.1 bu to 186.7 bpa, but they gave us the largest planted acreage shift on this report in at least the last 20 years (+1.4 mil acres) spurred an increase in production to 16,814 mbu.  25/26 ending stocks were slightly lowered by 7 mbu to 2,110 mbu. 
8/21/2025
Aug 21, 2025
Today the market ran higher on rumors for positive SRE announcements coming soon.  Bean oil was up over $2.  Beans finished the day up 20 cents at 10.56 Nov futures.  There is a chance we could make a run at the 10.74 Nov highs from back in June.  If we get there, I am a seller.  Bean basis remains in the garbage, so a run higher in futures doesn't help that either.  We still don't have a trade deal, so I think any rally is short lived at this time.