Grain Marketing Education, News & Strategies

Tidbits Russia-Ukraine: Sharply lower crude oil yesterday was primarily due to the prospect of the war between Russia and Ukraine ending next week. President Trump is telling Ukraine’s President Zelensky to sign a new peace proposal by Thanksgiving or risk losing U.S. support. U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll delivered the message to Zelensky on Thursday in the form of a 28-point plan drafted by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev. The p

Tidbits December CBOT options expire today. Flash sale: Yesterday morning, the USDA announced the sale to China of 462,000 mts of old crop soybeans and 132,000 mts of old crop white wheat. Despite the announcement of a large sale of beans and wheat to China, corn, wheat, and beans followed the trend from higher to lower. Relax! Stocks and commodities will recover very soon. U.S. stocks surged about 2% yesterday morning as Nvidia’s quarterly report was much better than expecte

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

Grain market summary of price outlook, seasonal situation, fundamental & technical analysis with our recommendations for corn, soybeans and wheat (Soft Red Winter, Hard Red Winter & Spring), also for inputs like fuel and fertilizer for past week Wednesday to Tuesday. Read about our approach to this report here. We provide three different marketing plans (in order of decreasing our preference). The marketing decision is yours to make, obviously you can mix those plans, change

Tidbits Soy Meal: A 30,000 mts cargo of Argentine soybean meal has cleared Chinese customs, marking the first shipment since Beijing allowed imports in 2019 and signaling a new trade channel with the world’s top soymeal exporter. USDA’s Crop Progress for the week ending November 16 had corn harvested at 91% (vs 94% five-year avg; 98% last year) and soybeans harvested at 95% (vs 96% five-year avg; 98% last year). Winter wheat is 92% planted (95% five-year avg; 94% last year)

Tidbits December CBOT options expire Friday. Soybean futures were supported Sunday night and yesterday morning by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s weekend comment that he expects a trade deal with China to be signed perhaps by Thanksgiving and expressed confidence China would buy U.S. soybeans, just a little later than we were told in late October. Then just before noon, the NOPA reported its soybean crush for October. It was 227.647 million bushels, 18 million more bushels

Tidbits During the 43 days the U.S. government was shut down, December spring wheat gained 6¢, Hard Red Winter December wheat gained 42¢, Soft Red Winter December wheat gained 47¢, December corn gained 28¢ and January beans gained $1.30, new highs not only for the year, but higher than any time since June 2024. There has been a lot of talk over the years that farm commodities are the only products in the U.S. that everyone is told what production was in the past and expecte

It's our weekly U.S. grain market analysis and outlook for corn, soybeans and wheat, including traders positioning, basis bids tracking, crush margins, weekly news wrap-up and comments. Dow Jones Industrial Average Index settled on Friday at 47,147, +160 points for the week. Crude oil settled at $59.95, +0.11. Dollar Index settled at 99.27, -0.29. Baltic Dry Index (a shipping freight-cost index) settled at 2,125, +21. Corn December futures settled at $4.30¼, +3¢ for the week.

Tidbits Soybean Outlook We were concerned before Friday’s USDA numbers were released that the soybean rally would soon end because soybean exports are not meeting expectations. China had never confirmed the purchase of any U.S. soybeans the Trump administration reported. On Friday, USDA confirmed the sale of 332,000 mts of soybeans sold during the shutdown to China, which is about 100,000 mts less than what the rumor mill and the Trump administration had reported. It is po

November S&D Last year, the USDA started the 2024 corn crop with a yield of 181 in May and continued that yield in June and July. In August, USDA put the yield at 183.2, then 183.6 in September, then 183.8 in October, 183.1 in November. There is no crop production report in December, so the December S&D always has the same yield as November S&D. This year may be different because of the shut down, but we doubt it. On 10 January 2025, March corn was $4.52, 52¢ above its cont

The USDA WASDE (S&D) numbers were negative everything. CBOT 40 Minutes After Report Dec corn -9 Jan beans -15 July CBOT wheat -10 July KC wheat -10 Sept Spring wheat -6 Corn will soon resume the uptrend – world supplies tighten and market does not believe 186 yield.

Tidbits Shutdown: President Trump signed the funding bill to reopen the government. Federal employees should already be back at work. S&D: At 11 AM Central Time today, the USDA will release a World Agricultural Supply & Demand Estimates (WASDE) for the first time since 12 September. USDA will also issue all the daily exports sales in excess of 100,000 mts of grains that should have been reported but were not reported because of the shut-down. The daily sales reports may be mo

Tidbits President Donald Trump is committed to providing Americans a $2,000 check using money that has come into government coffers from Trump's tariffs. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump's staff is exploring how to go about making the plan a reality. The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote today to end the government shutdown. OPEC revised its crude oil demand projections for 2026 from higher to about unchanged to show a “ba

Tidbits November USDA S&D report will be released this Friday. A Reuters' survey shows traders expect lower U.S. corn and soybean production. The average corn production is estimated at 16.557 billion bushels, down 257 million from September. The average yield is expected to slip from 186.7 to 184 bpa, while still a record. Despite the lower production, U.S. ending stocks are expected to rise slightly to 2.136 billion bushels due to higher carry-in stocks from last year’s cro

Grain market summary of price outlook, seasonal situation, fundamental & technical analysis with our recommendations for corn, soybeans and wheat (Soft Red Winter, Hard Red Winter & Spring), also for inputs like fuel and fertilizer for past week Wednesday to Tuesday. Read about our approach to this report here. We provide three different marketing plans (in order of decreasing our preference). The marketing decision is yours to make, obviously you can mix those plans, change

Tidbits U.S. harvest of soybeans was estimated 96% complete by a Reuters poll (last week 91%) and corn 92% complete (last week 83%). Winter wheat planting was about 95% complete, up from 91% last week, and 52% of the winter wheat crop was rated good to excellent, unchanged from last week. U.S. imports of containerized goods declined 7.5% year-over-year in October, with shipments from China dropping 16.3% as importers tempered expectations amid evolving tariff policies. China’

Tidbits Inflation: Two weeks ago, the U.S. inflation rate for the past 12 months was reported to be 3%, way above the Federal Reserve’s stated goal of 2%. Three days later, the Fed reduced the Fed Fund Rate. Chairman Jerome Powell said, “Inflation has eased significantly from its highs in mid-2022 but remains somewhat elevated relative to our 2 percent longer-run goal." In August 1971, the U.S. annual inflation rate reached an "intolerable" 3% and all financial “experts” pr

It's our weekly U.S. grain market analysis and outlook for corn, soybeans and wheat, including traders positioning, basis bids tracking, crush margins, weekly news wrap-up and comments. Dow Jones Industrial Average Index settled on Friday at 46,987, -576 points for the week. Crude oil settled at $59.84, -1.04. Dollar Index settled at 99.56, -0.16. Baltic Dry Index (a shipping freight-cost index) settled at 2,104, +138. Corn December futures settled at $4.27¼, -4¼¢ for the wee

Market Plan Utilizing Put Options Last weekend, we presented a market plan to lock in a floor price for soybeans near breakeven at no cost upfront while using puts options to capture further price gains should additional price gains become available. A feature of that plan is it removes all stress from catching a price near or even above the high for the year. The first step is to use a HTA to lock-in a floor price. Then place open orders to buy puts at ever higher strike

Tidbits The USDA will issue its first S&D in two months on Friday, 14 November. The biggest question is what will the corn yield be? Estimates: StoneX: 186 Dr. Cordonnier: 181 Pro Farmer: 182.7 S&P Global: 189.1 Farm Journal: 178.5 Informa: 185 Bloomberg: 185 ADM Investor Services: 180 Note that all of those estimates at 185 or more serve clients who are grain merchants or end users. ADM Investor Services is a wholly owned subsidiary of ADM but supposedly operates independe