Corn closes 12¢ lower, soybeans 25¢ lower, despite large sales to China | Thursday, March 18, 2021

China purchased U.S. corn for a third day in a row.

On Thursday, the CME Group’s farm markets dive hard into the close.

At the close, the May corn futures settled 11½¢ lower at $5.46½. July corn futures finished 12¼¢ lower at $5.30½. New-crop December corn futures closed 7½¢ lower at $4.68.

May soybean futures finished 25½¢ lower at $13.92½. July soybean futures closed 25½¢ lower at $13.80½. New-crop November soybean futures ended 29¼¢ lower at $12.06½.

May wheat futures finished 9½¢ lower at $6.30½.

May soymeal futures settled $6.70 short term lower at $398.20.

May soy oil futures closed 1.08¢ lower at 53.52¢ per pound.

In the outside markets, the NYMEX crude oil market is -4.66 lower (-7.21%) at $59.94. The U.S. dollar is higher, and the Dow Jones Industrials are 2 points lower (-0.01%) at 33,013 points.

Jack Scoville, PRICE Futures Group, says that prices fell for two reasons.

“It was in part dollar-based and in part weather-based. The Dollar took off higher and brought fund selling everywhere, especially into crude oil etc but also the grains. The weather in South America has improved with recent rains in Argentina and southern Brazil. Still too much rain in the north but the harvest is going on where possible and we are losing business. We can’t afford much new business in the beans but that is a story for another day here,” Scoville says.

On Thursday, private exporters reported to the USDA export sales of 696,000 metric tons of corn for delivery to China during the 2020/2021 marketing year. That brings the three-day total to over 121 million bushels of U.S. corn sold to China, this week.

The marketing year for corn began Sept. 1.

Separately, the USDA’s Weekly Export Sales Report Thursday shows weak demand figures for soybeans while corn beat expectations.

Corn = 1.22 million metric tons (mmt.) vs. the trade expectations of 300,000 to 1.10 mmt.

Soybeans = 202,400 mt. vs. the trade’s expectation of 200,000 to 800,000 mt.

Wheat = 390,100 mt.

Soybean meal = 234,600 mt.

Bob Linneman, Kluis Advisors, says that the trade is disappointing the market, based on the strong export sales reported this week.

“The bull spreads have picked up ground all week. If the weekly export sales report has positive news, then this trend should continue. If the report is neutral, then watch the spreads for indication of bias as we head toward the big month-end reports,” Linneman stated in a daily note to customers.

Linneman added, “May corn futures settled 4¢ higher on Wednesday. It took the bulls all day to get to that level. That was slightly disappointing, given the two big daily export sales that flashed on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Soybean prices ended trading on Wednesday 6¢ to 10¢ lower. The soybean bulls are still watching the lower end of the trading channel for support as reports continue to surface about variable production results in South America.”

SuccessfulFarming

Tags: corn, soybeans, CME Group's farm markets, China