Daily Ag Direction 7/9/24
Good Morning!
Crop conditions improving across the corn belt with 1% increases in corn and soybean G/E ratings. Winter wheat harvest comes in at 63% and spring wheat ratings up 3%. In what is another layer is the cake of bearishness, crop ratings stopped the bleeding for the time being and the market is shrugging off any bullish weather news. Yesterday seems like a realignment after some modest positivity so producers will watch today closely to see if something positive can manifest itself on the charts. If we stay range-bound I believe we will see more of this choppy trade in a narrow window until funds decide to unravel this big short position. Trying to determine why the funds are this short would be a fun exercise, however, what matters is that we will need a major weather scare, unforeseen lost acres or drought to come in and make this crop smaller. The problem with a small crop is that then the producer obviously has less to sell. Profitability takes a hit either way. It appears that producers are trying to do their part by holding a large on-farm portion of corn and a historically undersold new crop number. Unfortunately, the market is working to force that out of storage and it is fairly well known what is available. Wheat is recovering this morning and it looked like sympathetic trade yesterday following corn down. So far production concerns in wheat out of France seem to be shored up by other growing regions improving.
Sept ’24 KC Wheat +7 @ $5.84
July ’25 KC Wheat +4.5 @ $6.23
Sept Corn +4 @ $3.97
Dec Corn +3.5 @ $4.11
Aug Beans +1 @ $11.50
Nov Beans -3.5 @ $10.96
Sept Feeders +0.125 @ $260.750
Aug Live +0.125 @ $185.425
Please reach out to your CEA Risk Management Advisor if you have any questions. Have a great day!
