Good Moring,
Old crop corn is unchanged while new crop is down 5 to start the day.
We saw a significant selloff in corn last week with May futures closing 27 cents lower, July futures closing 30 cents lower while December closed 20 cents lower. As of Friday afternoon, the funds are reported to be long 20,000 corn contracts and 113,000 soybean contracts. Since we haven’t seen an update from the CFTC in over a week (April 18th), I would anticipate the funds are net short 20-30,000 corn contracts and long 80-90,000 soybean contracts.
Chinas corn cancelations were the snowball that caused the avalanche last week. On Monday China cancelled 327 million metric tons (12 million bushels). On Thursday China cancelled 233 million metric tons (9 million bushels). These cancellations were not what the market needed as it puts the cap on US exports to China somewhere between 8 and 12 million metric ton. These cancellations are due to the size and cheaper price of Brazil’s crop that has become available. Weekly export sales came in at 15.7 million bushels, which was in line with estimates, but significantly behind the ten-week average of 44.3 million bushels. We are currently 113 million bushels behind the pace needed to meet the USDA’s projections.
Last week’s planting progress showed that 14% of the US corn crop had been planted compared to 8% the previous week and 11% for the five-year average. The Dakotas are still reporting 0% while Minnesota reported 1% of the crop being planted. Neither of these are out of range for their five-year averages.
Warmer weather is forecasted for the coming week with the Dakotas seeing mid 60’s by mid-week and mid 70’s by the weekend. This should lead to good progress late in the week for most of the corn belt. This afternoon’s planting progress is expected to show 20-24% of the corn crop planted.
Have a Safe Day.
Garry Gard
920-348-6844
ggard@didioninc.com
