Monday August 19, 2024

• Corn and soybeans are trying to recover from their move to fresh lows on Friday while wheat is sitting slightly lower
• The market will be turning its focus to the ProFarmer tour that begins this morning. Groups are beginning in Ohio and South Dakota and working their way through the corn belt
  • Will this play out in a bearish or a bullish way? Will what they find be bad enough to give the market a much needed bump? In past years we have seen a bullish turn to the market during the tour
• Chinas meal stock is at levels that haven’t been seen since 2018 as the crush industry has huge inventories. Soybean stocks at Chinese ports have reached historically high levels with a large majority of those beans coming from South America (See the charts below)
  • Crush demand is declining and the over supply may lessen the amount of of beans China will purchase in Q4 of this year
• The CFTC Report last weekshowed the funds covered more of their short position than expected in both corn and soybeans. With this coverage we didn’t see any reaction from the market
• The poor wheat crop in the EU made headlines last week as a result of excessive rainfall. The French soft wheat crop is looking to be the worst since the 1980s. They expect the crop to be down 25% from last year