Corn and soy in the green. Tuesday, September 19, 2023

December corn is currently up less than a penny at $4.72¼. Naomi Blohm, senior market advisor with Total Farm Marketing, says the next level of support for corn is $4.65.

November soybeans are up 2¼¢.

As harvest gets underway, Blohm notes yield reports vary widely “from county to county, field to field, [and] state to state.”

CBOT wheat is down 4¼¢. KC wheat is down 4½¢. Minneapolis wheat is down 4½¢.

“But the trade is increasingly more concerned about weak export demand,” says Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist for StoneX. “China bought another 15 cargoes of soybeans last week, down from 18 the previous week, and down from 35 plus in previous weeks. Nearly all of the purchases were from South America, which has booked more than 200 million bushels for shipment to China for the fourth quarter of this calendar year, reducing the need for U.S. soybeans during our peak shipment time.”

Suderman says traders are also paying close attention to the strength of El Nino.

“Forecast models call for below normal rainfall for Brazil throughout its soybean growing season,” he says. “But it normally gets far more rain than needed to produce a crop. It could still see a short crop, but the big El Nino years of ’97-98 and ’15-16 produced trend and above-trend soybean yields. As such, I can’t discount the possibility of a short Brazilian crop, but neither can I assume that it will happen, just because the monsoons start late and are weaker than normal.”

Crude oil is up $1.13.

S&P 500 futures are down 24 points. Dow futures are down 195 points.

Tags: futures, live cattle, feeder cattle, lean hogs, corn, soybeans, wheat