Good Morning!
I hope you had a good start to your week. After a three-day weekend, I went to talk markets in Indiana. While on the drive I saw everything from crummy crops to some really good looking stuff. Thre is no question it’s going to be a variable year. Around our place, we are starting to see a few of the earlier group beans turning a bit, while most of the corn is losing color if it wasn’t fired already. The beans certainly have weathered the storm better than corn in our area, and I would expect yields will show that over the long-run. Many of you continue to report varying degrees of frustration with prices as well as weather and most of all, political issues. All I can say is, we have to hope things are going to turn around soon…as right now, it looks pretty tough as far as income is concerned in 2019. Keep the feedback headed my way…and if you get into your fields, let me know how those early yields look. While it’s going to be a good three weeks around here, I know in some areas wheels will be turning any day now. mbennett@AgMarket.Net
The corn and bean markets were interesting to start the week in that the overnight market saw corn down a shade while beans were pushing double-digit losses. The day session essentially saw a flip-flop of sorts with corn struggling mightily and beans working back towards unchanged. With few still expecting an ‘early frost’ it seemed funds were ready to pile on the short positions. For beans, plenty of talk remains about just how much benefit the later beans will get out of the August rains as many beans will be shutting down soon. Outside market influence was likely negative as the Dollar was slightly higher, while crude was off. October crude was down $1.14 at $53.96. This was $1.28 off the high and $1.12 off the low.
Corn – On Sunday night, the corn market started lower but worked its way into a quiet session. The day session wasn’t pretty, however, as December corn was down 8 ¾ cents at $3.61. This was 9 cents off the high and a half-penny off the low. Weekly export inspections were part of the reason for the negativity as we saw close to a 300k metric tons drop from a week ago with just 355k mt of exports posted. The good to excellent ratings on corn again improved this week…by 1%, moving to 58%. Given just 41% of the crop is dented nationally, the crop is still obviously well behind normal but with many forecasters backing off the early-frost talk, the market seems to think the crop is growing. In my opinion, we’ve had the right type of weather over the last few weeks to stabilize this crop and keep it from slipping further. However, I don’t see a yield approaching the 169.5 posted by USDA. So, I think this crop is better than what I feared it would be three weeks ago…but still closer to 160 than 170 in my opinion. Time will tell…but don’t get too beat up just yet. Heck, we haven’t harvested much of anything anywhere, so let’s see how this plays out. Given sales I have on to this point, I see no reason to consider any unless we see a large-scale rally.
Soybeans – Soybeans on Sunday night were struggling to find buyers, but fortunately the day session brought beans back closer to unchanged. On the close, November beans were down just a half-penny at $8.68 ½. This was three-quarters of a cent off the high and 9 ¼ off the low. Weekly export inspections were up sharply on the week…by over 300k metric tons at 1.28 million metric tons. Ratings for beans were unchanged on the week at 56% good/excellent…this is in comparison to last year’s 67% good/excellent on this week. Also, we still see just 86% of the beans are setting pods…which is well below the 5-year average of 96%. While the bean crop has seen great benefit from the rain of late, the tough thing is not all of the beans will get to use that moisture completely. Given how late most of the beans are in 2019, unfortunately many of them will be shutting down in the next couple of weeks. I’m in no mood to increase bean sales just yet…I want to see how this crop pans out.
Let me know if you’d like to discuss any strategies. Have a great week!
Matt Bennett
217-273-1133 – Work
@chief321 – Twitter
matt@AgMarket.Net – E-mail
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