The excitement of China’s corn purchases has mostly subsided—although old-crop corn still has plenty of support from those export prospects and strong cash values—and the grains couldn’t find any help from outside/global markets. The bulls will try to gather some momentum up to and beyond this afternoon’s planting progress report, looking for a slowed pace last week and a fairly grim weather outlook for planting this week.
South Korea issued tenders for 265k tonnes of corn, for Oct/Nov delivery.
UkrAgroConsult reported that Ukraine’s spring grain planting campaign reached 4.98 million hectares (12.3 mln acres), up 12% from last year’s pace.
AgRural estimated the 2011/12 Brazilian soy crop at 66.24 MMT, down from last month but only by 0.7%; they raised their planted area estimate by a couple hundred thousand hectares, offsetting a fairly steep yield reduction.
Private analyst, Informa, on Friday estimated the Argentine soybean crop at an even 40 million tonnes down 5.0 MMT from their estimate early this month, 8.8 MMT below last year’s crop, and 13.0 MMT behind Informa’s initial early-season ARG estimate. They’ve got harvest at 55% complete, slightly behind both last season and the five-year average pace.
Friday’s traditional CFTC Report showed new record net overall spec fund longs in both soybeans and soy meal as of last Tuesday (4/24), at 249,342 and 107,252 contracts, respectively; both positions were just a few thousand ahead of what daily trade expectations had expected on that date. Conversely, corn’s net fund long declined by a whopping 63k on the week (selling 32k longs and adding 31k shorts) to 147k overall, more than 46k short of the trade-estimated position. The Disaggregated Report showed managed money funds dumping 45k net corn on the week, while other traders sold off nearly 18k, and producers and merchants added 59,314 corn contracts to Tuesday, 4/24.
May CBOT deliveries: wheat 2 contracts and 4/27/11, beans 752 & 3/23/12.
Matt Zeller