Good Morning,

Steady markets to start the day after a bad week for the grains. Corn has traded lower 4 days this week losing 15 cents while soybeans have traded lower all 5 days this week losing 48 cents as of 830 am. There are several factors pressuring the markets this week, but here are the main ones:
1. Weather is favorable. Warm and wet weather across the Midwest has this crop off to one of the best starts in history.
2. Poor export numbers in soybeans and corn the last few weeks.
3. Political tensions between the US and several of our trade partners as trade wars escalate. China and Mexico are the largest.
An improved weather forecast that is trending cooler and wetter for the Midwest next week has been encouraging additional liquidation of long positions that traders hold. With the funds still long 113,00 corn and 60,000 soybean contracts and no major Midwest drought in the forecast I would expect more volatility in the coming weeks. Iowa, the #1 corn producing state (20% of US total) is off to a great start with 81% of the crop rated good/excellent.
There has been limited progress on the China trade negotiations, but President Trump plans to leave the G7 summit hours earlier than planned after a war of words broke out between him and the leaders of France and Canada over trade.
I don’t believe now is the time to be making sales of new crop, but would strongly advise producers to have firm offers in place. This market is very volatile and any rally we may see will be very short lived. Old crop offers should be in place as well, but at much lower levels than we were looking for two weeks ago. Next Tuesdays S&D report could add more pressure to the downside for commodities if we see larger inventories.

Have a Safe Weekend!

Garry Gard
920-348-6844
ggard@didionmilling.com