Market News

Down day for corn, soybeans, and wheat

Soybeans were modestly lower on profit taking and technical selling, along with spillover from the outside markets. Contracts were up early on the spike in export demand from unknown destinations but couldn’t follow through. Wednesday morning, that unnamed buyer purchased 194,000 tons of U.S. beans, with 126,000 tons for 2019/20 and the remaining 68,000 tons for 2020/21, bringing the week’s total to 440,500 tons. The USDA did raise production estimates for Argentina and Brazil this week. Brazil’s harvest is more than halfway complete and their currency is at an historic low against the dollar, making their beans far cheaper than U.S. beans, even without China’s tariff. Still, this recent spate of sales to unknown might be a sign that China is starting to issue one-year tariff waivers. Soybean meal was steady to lower and bean oil was down, following the general trend in commodities.

Corn was modestly lower on profit taking and technical selling. Ag commodities and the broader market gave back Tuesday’s gains, and in some cases more than that, on continued coronavirus concerns. The USDA’s supply and demand numbers were neutral to bearish, with the next set of numbers out April 9th. Before that, the USDA’s prospective planting and quarter stocks reports are out on the 31st. Corn is also monitoring conditions in Argentina and Brazil. Ethanol futures were lower. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says ethanol production last week average 1.044 million barrels a day, down 35,000 on the week, and stocks were reported at 24.334 million barrels, 630,000 less than the previous week’s record high.

The wheat complex was lower on profit taking and technical selling. The USDA lowered world ending stocks but raised the global production estimate, leaving the fundamental outlook neutral to bearish. Stateside, the trade is watching emergence conditions for winter wheat and weather ahead of widespread spring wheat planting. The USDA’s weekly national crop progress and condition reports resume in April. DTN says Jordan bought 60,000 tons of milling wheat. The USDA’s weekly export sales numbers are out Thursday at 8:30 Eastern/7:30 Central.

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