Friday April 23, 2021

• Markets taking a breather after moving up limit yesterday in old crop corn, and both old and new crop wheat
• Spec funds sitting on massive long positions 
  • Speculators taking a long position means that they have bought contracts (in this case a near record amount), indicating the belief that the price will still go higher so they can sell in future and make a profit 
  • Contributing to these longs is the fact that money is flowing into the Ag markets from stocks, bonds and other commodities as a ‘safer’ investment than those more volitile markets  
  • Additionally, due to position limit increases earlier this year, speculators can now get twice as long as they were previously able
• Chinese buying continues to encourage the market – yesterday there were some rumored sales that have now been confirmed of corn sales to “unknown” (assumed China) and soybean sales to China \
• Brazilian forecast remains dry for the 10-14 period over a good portion of their second crop corn belt 
• As the weather turns warmer over the weekend and into next week in the U.S. it is expected that a significant amount of planting activities will be taking place across the corn belt