Week Ending 12/19/2025

The corn market closed higher last week as demand remains strong on the export side. The market continues to digest export sales reports that are slowly being caught up by the government. Rumors on Thursday of Chinese interest in US corn rallied the markets and carried over in to Friday. March, May and July futures all ended the week 3 higher following a bounce. The funds are estimated to be long 34,835 corn and long 165,787 soybean contracts.

Demand on the export front continues to support corn prices.  Accumulated export sales are well ahead of last year and the 5-year average. We are still in the first quarter of the marketing year and a couple months from seeing competition from South America. It could be that other countries are front loading their purchases with the US offering the cheapest corn on the world market or is this a trend that will last longer with cheap prices? The dollar index has been collapsing against world currencies since the end of November, which has supported US exports. If the dollar continues to slide, it will keep our commodities cheaper to importing countries and add support long term to corn. The USDA has a lofty goal of 3.2 billion bushels for export which if achieved it would be 12% higher than last year’s record 2.858 billion bushels. We are currently on track to export 3.35 billion bushels.

Reports circulated last week that the EPA expects to issue its final ruling on the 2026 & 2027 biofuel blending mandates in the first quarter of next year (after originally expecting to see it happen earlier this fall). The delay would throw one of the administration’s most consequential energy policy choices into next year and folds the highly anticipated quotas into a growing cluster of interlocking decisions the White House is weighing on biofuels policy.

The year is quickly coming to an end, and we have limited trade hours this week. The markets will trade full hours on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. The market does close at 12:05pm on Wednesday and will remain closed until Friday morning. I look for limited volume in the markets as many traders to be off all week for the holidays. Any outside noise (China export sales, political moves, etc.) could lead to volatile trade with limited traders. The CFTC and export sales will both catch up next week, which will help us head into January with all eyes on the USDA’s WASDE.

Merry Christmas!

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