Good Morning!
I hope those of you who are getting started with harvest are getting along well. For the rest of us, I assume many of you are running out of things to do to get ready to run. I generally have harvested a fair amount by this time in the calendar…so it’s an odd year for sure. It’s interesting in that several of you have called telling me how bad you need rain while others only want the heat so they can get their corn to the finish line. Regardless, 2019 has had a little bit of dysfunction for everyone. Given how challenging this year has been, I am ready to get harvest started…so I can get it finished and put an end to this season. I know many of you feel the same way. Given our frustrations, keep in mind safety first as you go to the field. Good luck and be safe. Also…as always, I would appreciate it if you would keep me posted on how harvest is going. mbennett@AgMarket.Net
The corn and bean markets both traded either side of unchanged between the two sessions. With the corn market coming into the day session with little momentum, it was a nice surprise to see a rally build and prices higher than the couple higher we saw at times on the overnight. For soybeans, it seems like they just couldn’t get going and ended settling in the middle of their range for the day. The biggest news of the day was based on oil as Saudi Arabia had about half of their production capacity halted due to drone bombings…presumably by Iran. This drove crude sharply higher which certainly supported our ag markets. The Dollar was also moderately higher, but outside market influence was certainly friendly due to the sharp rally in crude. October crude surged $6.80, settling at $61.65. This was $1.30 off the high and $2.88 off the low.
Corn – On Sunday night, the corn market started a bit higher but couldn’t hold the gains through the session. The day session was able to pick up the slack, however…as corn settled with a nice close. December corn ended the day up 5 ¼ cents at $3.74. This was three-quarters of a penny off the high and 6 ½ cents off the low…and right at 20 higher than a week ago! Weekly export inspections were down on the week by almost 200k metric tons from a week ago with 422k mt of exports posted. The good to excellent ratings on corn didn’t change this week…staying at 55%. Given 68% of the crop is dented as compared to 87% for a five-year average, this crop has a long way to go. Only 4% has been harvested which compares to 7% on average. The corn market seems content the low has been put in for now, given how it has acted in the past week. Whether we’ll see a large-scale rally or not is anyone’s guess, but I have to think this crop is getting smaller instead of growing. While we need the heat to finish the crop, plenty are too dry at the same time which is likely robbing bushels. I’m not making sales for the time being.
Soybeans – Soybeans on Sunday night weren’t moving much and kept up the quiet trade through much of the day session. On the close, November beans were up a penny and a quarter at $9.00. This was 4 ¾ cents off the high and 5 ¾ off the low…and 43 cents higher than a week ago. Weekly export inspections were down from last week…by over 300k metric tons at 667 thousand metric tons. Ratings for beans were down on the week by 1 point, moving to 54% good/excellent. However, only 15% of the beans are dropping leaves versus 38% for a five-year average. This bean crop is about to run out of time soon…which could have a tough impact on yields when it’s all said and done. I’m still of the opinion the USDA is too high on yields…especially given some of the early results I continue to hear. Most producers who have shared yields with me are coming in below what their expectations were…and those weren’t all that lofty. One producer in Illinois shared bean yields were coming in 20 off of last year at just under 60. My thoughts all along have been the early beans would be much better than the late beans so this concerns me a bit. I personally want to hold off on bean sales for the time being…as I think there’s more of this story to be told.
Let me know if you’d like to discuss any strategies. Have a great week!
Matt Bennett
217-273-1133 – Work
@chief321 – Twitter
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