Market News

Down day for corn, soybeans, wheat

Soybeans were lower on profit taking, technical selling, and spillover from the outside markets. The dollar was higher with the Dow, gold, and crude oil lower. China did buy more new crop U.S. beans, 165,000 tons, but aside from that, there was no new news. Soybean meal was mixed with nearbys up and deferreds down, while bean oil was lower. The NOPA member crush numbers are out Monday at 7:30 AM Central, with the average guess at 141.5 million tons, which would be up on the month and year.

Corn was lower on technical selling, profit taking, and outside market direction. There was no real fresh news and dry parts of the Midwest have received some much needed rain. In any event, with no real fresh supportive news, especially from the demand side of the market, corn posted losses. Ethanol futures were lower. According to Dow Jones Newswires, Zimbabwe’s corn crop was hit hard by drought and is expected to come up 1 million tons short of what’s needed domestically.

The wheat complex was lower on technical and commercial selling, along with outside market pressure. Wheat’s long term fundamentals remain bearish, particularly on the global supply side of the balance sheet. Also, there was pressure from improving U.S. and European crop weather. Ukraine’s Ag Ministry reports 90% of winter grain planted area is sprouting with 68.8% of wheat in good to satisfactory shape. Kazakhstan’s Ag Ministry states wheat stocks as of April 1 were 14.985 million tons. According to DTN, Morocco bought 180,000 tons of soft wheat from an unspecified source and Libya picked up 30,000 tons of Russian milling wheat. In sell-buy-sell activity, Japan is tendering for 54,000 tons of food wheat, 26,000 tons of food barley, and 6,000 tons of malting barley.