Corn Gains on Solid Exports While Beans Continue Lower

A solid weekly export report for corn allowed corn to move higher and pull wheat to the first daily gain in a week while beans continued their pilgrimage lower as the buying in the grains did not spill over the to the soy complex. Other news was limited but with the USDA getting close to releasing all the government shutdown delayed reports, the trade will begin to have current numbers within the next few weeks. The last two weeks of trading for 2025 will be holiday shortened with the Thursday closures for Christmas and New Years which will thin volume and potentially increase volatility on any surprise news.

News and Notes:

• Consistently good forecasts for all major SA production regions continue with the window closing quickly on a major yield loss pattern over the next few months. If you do not know what the SA forecasts are, just look at the bean market and the steady slide on record SA yield potential.
• Rather than beat the dead horse of bearishness in the bean charts, I put the December 2026 daily chart on Page 2 to show the impressive 2-day mid-week bounce. The intersection of the 200 (black line) and 100 (pink) DMAs provided the support needed to allow the positive demand news to allow a solid bounce to the top of the moving average congestion at the 20 and 50 DMAs. Today’s high of $4.63 ½ was right in the middle of the post-harvest range with $4.56 to $4.68 developing as a comfortable channel for a market with plenty of supply but also plenty of demand to determine market fair value. The funds are believed to be holding net long of roughly 250 MBU which gives them flexibility to add or subtract without over-committing cash.
• Cattle continue to be an interesting market to follow and even more interesting how to separate fact from fiction on what is coming out of Washington. My expectation for all cattle markets for today’s trade was sharply lower after last night’s nationally televised address by President Trump continuing to put the high cost of beef as something he is working on. Despite another direct assault from this administration, cattle and feeder cattle prices fought off initial weakness to finish with only modest losses. Friday’s Cattle on Feed report will continue to show the record tightness of cattle and a lack of new cattle on feed which should support prices, but the bulls and ranchers have to be nervous when your President says “we will just write the cattle guys a check” so they can look like they are tough on food inflation. Farming is on the fast track to being a branch of the federal government.
• Multiple sources have reported that China has purchased half of the 12 MMT (475 MBU) of beans through either direct purchase by Sino Grain (government grain division), futures contracts (the October pre-trade “deal” rally announcement), and Unknown destinations in the weekly export sales reports. Unfortunately, the old crop bean market does not care and continues lower.
• Corn on the other hand finally rallied today after another strong week of export sales and rumors that China has interest in buying some US corn. With the strong weekly ethanol usage numbers, consistently solid weekly export totals to our usual corn trading partners (Mexico in particular), corn has an interesting demand outlook. Corn could get reasonably bullish with a 2 BPA in the upcoming January USDA crop report and any stretch of dry/hot pollination weather in Brazil and/or Argentina.

Since I am desperately trying to stay on Santa’s nice list, my focus needed to be on corn today as it is the only market worth talking about. Rallies are never as far away as they seem and with some help from the USDA in the January report and a surprise of two hot and dry South American weeks in a month, things could materially change. It is hard to be optimistic after the beatdown the industry has seen over the last 2-years, but we are stuck in the oversupply doldrums and need Mother Nature to negatively intervene to snap out of it.