Grain Marketing Education, News & Strategies

Tidbits Futures: March soybeans, and all three March wheat contracts made new highs for the year yesterday and March corn traded to its highest price since before the USDA S&D on 12 January, despite the dollar index being a little higher yesterday for the second day in the past 8 days. Prices were supported by higher crude oil, cold temperatures (more soybean meal and corn for feed demand, fewer farmer sales, potential winter kill on wheat), expected strong export sales today

Tidbits Flash sale: Yesterday morning the USDA announced the sale of 192,350 mts of old crop soybeans to unknown. Biofuel: Republican U.S. lawmakers plan to create a task force to study potential year-round sales of higher-ethanol E15 gasoline blends in the U.S., after an attempt to pass such legislation in a funding bill this week fell through. Farm groups and Midwest ethanol advocates blasted the decision to form a task force instead of passing legislation, calling it a blo

Tidbits Ag Futures will not trade Sunday night to Monday afternoon morning due to Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Grain futures will reopen Monday evening at normal times. Exports: Yesterday morning, the USDA announced the sale of 136,000 mts of old crop corn to South Korea and 334,000 mts of old crop soybeans to China. Chinese customs data showed they imported 8.044 million mts of beans from all sources in December 2025, up 1.2% from December 2024. Total imports in 2025 at 111.8

Tidbits On Monday at 11 AM Central Time, the USDA will issue its revised estimates for domestic and world Supply and Demand (S&D), the final 2025 U.S. crop production and yield numbers, the Quarterly Stocks (inventory) of commodities as of 1 December 2025, Winter Wheat and Canola seedings, and Cotton Ginnings. The January USDA reports are one of the top three major report days of every year for grain producers and users. The market action of March futures for the day of & the

Tidbits The CBOT ag markets will have regular hours today, but no night session tonight and will reopen Friday morning at 8:30 AM Central with a regular closing time. Flash sales: Yesterday morning, the USDA announced the sale of 136,000 mts of old crop beans to China and 231,000 mts of old crop beans to unknown. AgrInvest Commodities’ Eduardo Vanin yesterday morning: “China booked a few U.S. (soybean) cargoes yesterday. The total is close to 140 cargoes, ~80% of the 12 milli

Tidbits Technically, March corn is looking good after testing its 100 day moving average the past three days and then settled up 4¢ yesterday. March beans traded 6¢ higher early yesterday, then 7¢ lower later before settling down 2¾¢, about 10¢ below its 100 day moving average and a little below the bottom of the gap from 27 October. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is 21.36 is quite supportive. Fundamentally, the market is talking about Brazil’s “bigger than ever” bean crop

Tidbits Interest Rate: Members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voted 9 to 3 to lower the benchmark Fed Funds rate by a quarter point to a new target range of 3.5% to 3.75%. One vote was to lower the policy rate by half percent, while two votes supported no change. Post meeting comments included that the Federal Reserve will buy $40 billion worth of U.S. treasury bills over the next 30 days to put more money in circulation; the Fed expects one rate cut in 2026 and

Tidbits U.S. crude oil stocks including the SPR rose by 800,000 barrels in the week ended Nov. 28, following a 3.3 million-barrel build the prior week. It was up 0.1% from the prior week and 2.9% year over year, and remained about 3% below the five-year seasonal average. Imports from Mexico dropped by 431,000 bpd to a weekly record low of 131,000 bpd in the week. Venezuela’s oil exports averaged about 921,000 bpd in November, the year’s third-highest monthly level. Overall ex

Tidbits China bought at least ten more shiploads of U.S. soybeans (~650,000 mts) on Tuesday according to multiple sources within the grain export trade. Eduardo Vanin of AgrInvest Commodities: China continues buying soybeans from the U.S. Purchases have reached 67 cargoes, ~35% of the program. These purchases make no economic sense — they are political purchases. The losses on these soybeans for crush are enormous, which leads the market to think: regardless of price, the sta

Tidbits Flash sale: Yesterday morning the USDA announced the sale of 330,000 mts of old crop beans to China. The U.S. administration will soon announce details of payments to farmers hurt by low crop prices and trade disputes, Secretary Rollins said yesterday. She also said that the USDA will be making an announcement about "structural changes" to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, the week after Thanksgiving. She has said all SNAP recip

Tidbits Additional financial aid to American farmers will soon be provided by the Trump administration as Agriculture Secretary Rollins said an announcement could come “perhaps in the next couple of weeks." The USDA will lead a trade mission to Taipei, Taiwan, to expand trade opportunities for U.S. companies and boost U.S. agricultural exports. The mission takes place from September 29 to October 1 and includes 39 agribusinesses, trade organizations, and representatives from

Tidbits Farm aid: The U.S. Republican farm-state lawmakers urge the Trump administration to issue autumn farm aid by year-end due to low crop prices and a trade war. Four lawmakers are in talks with USDA and other officials about an aid package, ideally by December. Senator John Hoeven cites a similar $23 billion payout during Trump’s first term to offset China trade losses and suggests adding aid to a spending bill; he says farmers need help soon, but by year-end is acceptab

Tidbits CBOT grain and oilseed markets are usually lower the two to four days before the USDA releases its monthly S&D. Yesterday, everything except bean oil was lower after being lower on Tuesday. Typically, prices reach a price low enough that some of the shorts (traders who sold before they buy) decide to take some profit and liquidate their short position by buying futures which results in a very modest rally the day before the S&D. The September S&D will be issued at 10

Tidbits Yesterday, December corn opened unchanged at $4.18 (open price) and then traded to $4.14¼ (day low) technical support during the day. Before the close it recovered to $4.21 (day high) and settled at $4.19¾ (close price), up 1¾¢ for the day. Such four prices form a bar or a candle for the chart. Bar/candle charts give you more sense of the trading periods compared to linear charts (where only one price describes a period). We hope you are usually using either bar or ca

Tidbits All September grain futures positions and September basis contracts must be priced or rolled today before the close. As expected, CBOT contracts were weak yesterday as they usually are a few days before the first notice day for deliveries on futures contracts, which is Friday. Today is a toss-up as far as traditional up or down price day, but first notice day is usually an up day. The Hard Red Winter Wheat futures market made new contract lows each of the past two day

Tidbits Flash sale: Yesterday morning, the USDA announced the sale of 100,000 mts of new crop corn to Colombia and 125,741 mts of new crop corn to Mexico. Soft red winter wheat was strong yesterday for no apparent reason. In such situations, at the end of the day, market comments report there was a rumor China was shopping for U.S. products, in this case, soft red winter wheat. Coconut oil is one of the nine vegetable oils traded worldwide. Coconut oil prices in India hav

Tidbits Corn: Karen Braun was correct when she reported yesterday that U.S. corn stocks-to-use ratio at 13.3%, is the lowest for an August USDA projection in three years despite a yield 9.8 bushels above the previous record on the largest corn acreage since 1936. That is quite a testament to the magnitude of the corn demand. Ukraine: Reuters reported last evening that European leaders and Ukraine's President Zelenskiy spoke with Trump in a last-ditch call hosted by Germa

Tidbits Basis: Delphos, Ohio Bunge soybean crush plant weakened their fall delivery basis by 5¢ to -35X (35¢ under November futures) on Monday or Tuesday. Producers Ag’s Canton, Kansas facility weakened their fall delivery corn basis by 5¢ to -35Z (35¢ under December) yesterday as did Cargill at its corn syrup plant in Dayton, Ohio to -25Z. If you have not made a decision about setting fall delivery basis, make it today. That does not mean you should blindly set the basis o

Tidbits The U.S. GDP for the second quarter at 3%, market expected just 2.3%. As expected, the Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged. For the first time since 1993, two Federal Reserve officials dissented from the majority decision out of total 11 votes, advocating for a rate cut. Fed Governor Christopher Waller and Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman, both Trump appointees, broke with the majority. The Bank of Canada held its benchmark interest rate unchanged

Tidbits The lowest September corn closing prices this year were: $3.98 on 8 July $3.96 on 11 July $3.98½ on 23 July (yesterday) After closing higher 4 out of 5 days, September corn has closed lower 3 consecutive days: 4¾¢, then 4½ ¢, then ¾¢ yesterday, a total of 10¢ in 3 days. The technical tool, Average Directional Index (ADX), measures the strength of the trend, not its direction. A rising ADX suggests a strong trend, while a falling ADX indicates a weakening trend or ra