Pavel Hála

Big move in grains

Published March 29, 2013

We saw a big move down in grains yesterday. That’s because USDA released their prospective plantings and grain stocks reports. Farmers want to plant more acres of both corn and wheat this year. Corn estimate is at a record 97.3 million acres against 97.16 last year. Soybeans came in at fourth highest ever at 77.1 million acres (77.2 last year) and wheat at 56.34 million acres which is a big jump from last year’s 55.74 million acres. These estimates helped to bring prices lower yesterday.

But these numbers were expected and nearly all of them were in line with estimates prior to the plantings report. The big surprise was the stocks report. Especially old crop corn stocks that came at 5.4 billion bushels. Way above the 5.03 billion pre-report estimate. Soybeans were also higher – 999 million bushels vs expected 947 million. Finally, wheat was at 1.234 billion vs expected 1.167 billion bushels.

These two reports caused a sharp selloff. Corn made a 40 cent limit move yesterday:

zck13

Wheat and soybeans are both down nearly 50 cents from Wednesday’s close:

zsk13
zwk13

I’m eager to see what corn and especially corn spreads do next week when the markets open.

Posted in Market analysis and tagged , , ,
Pavel Hála

Pavel is the founder and CEO of SpreadCharts.

All articles

Check out also these great articles

Pavel Hála

Data > opinions

Two weeks ago, my Bayesian model for the stock market flashed a strong buy signal....

Read more
Pavel Hála

Our passivity is over

While we’ve pointed out several tactical opportunities throughout the year, our strategic stance has largely...

Read more
Pavel Hála

The Lumber is dead, long live the Lumber

If you trade Lumber futures, you might have noticed that no new contracts have been...

Read more
Pavel Hála

SPECIAL REPORT: Silver mining costs

More than a week ago, I posted this cryptic tweet. Although it was about gold,...

Read more