· May corn lost 3 cents to close at 663’2 after a wild week of trading. Futures reached 682’4 on Tuesday morning before a sharp collapse with deferred months down even harder and the December contract making new lows for the year. May beans lost 17’0 to close at 1483’4, featuring similar price action as corn; trading to 1531’4 on Tuesday before collapsing almost 50 cents into the lowest weekly close since March 30th. May spring wheat lost 9’2 to close at 847’0, its lowest since settling at 824’4 on March 6th.
· Dizzying six sessions in the grain markets as Dec corn rallied 20 cents in three days only to fall 23 cents over the next three days and make new lows for the year. Similar for new crop beans, up 30 cents and then down 50 cents, while spring wheat managed an orderly up 50 cents and right back down 50 cents. The first half of that roller coaster had the market agreeing with us on three main bullish short-term stories. First, a much cooler/wetter forecast for the Corn Belt and, with it planting delay potential. Second, extreme drought areas in the southwestern Corn Belt were forecast to remain warm and dry. And third, Russian inspectors had been holding up the passage of Ukrainian grain ships in the export corridor. Starting late Tuesday, that entire narrative shifted. Forecast models changed significantly, remaining very cool but with much less precip for the Corn Belt, along with strong precip chances this week for KS/OK. Russian inspections/Ukrainian shipments resumed mid-week. But also, a lingering demand problem came back to the forefront as exports struggled mightily. Corn tallied only 12.3 million bushels of new sales, the worst total for this week in many years, while beans only managed 3.7 million bushels. Both were well below the needed pace to hit USDA targets and starting to run out of time to catch up. We mentioned one month ago that the large Brazilian soybean crop was having an impact and Brazil captured a lot of attention this week as our terrible U.S. sales coincide with Brazilian beans being offered almost $3.00/bushel cheaper than U.S. beans.
Latest Euro model extending out to May 2nd
So what happens next?...