Grains are higher at midday:
Corn + 14 ½ cents/bu (Dec @ 2.79 ¼ )
Soybeans + 32 cents/bu (Nov @ 10.25 ¼ )
Chi Wheat + 27 ¾ cents/bu (Dec @ 5.77 ¼ )
Cdn $ +0.00370 (75.095 cents)
WTI Crude Oil +0.55/barrel (39.84)
The USDA released it’s Quarterly Stocks Report, as of September 1st at noon ET today, and the report itself was certainly friendly for the market. Corn immediately shot up to 11 cents/bu higher on the day, while soybeans strengthened 21 cents/bu, and Chicago Wheat futures climbed to be 20 cents/bu better on the day. Grains have obviously strengthened even more since. The USDA printed lower than expected USA stock figures for corn, soybeans, and wheat, with corn probably the biggest surprise, as stocks were 255 million bushels below the average trade guess. The bullishness of this data has led funds, who were already big longs in the market, to aggressively buy all grain futures.
A snapshot of today’s numbers is listed below:
Today’s stock numbers are very friendly, given what the trade was expecting to see. The size of today’s rally is, in part, a function of the fact that grains have been under pressure for the last week, as a result of the USA harvest. Now that we see values this high, market bulls can start to point to “what if” the USDA lowers USA soybean and corn yields in the October report. Given current production and demand forecasts, today’s stock numbers suggest 2020/21 USA corn carryout of 2.25 billion bushels and 400 million soybeans. Those are not wildly bullish figures, but they are a lot tighter than what was being forecasted, hence the strength this afternoon