Mark's Market Talk for February 3, 2025

Feb 03, 2025

Not sure where to start as last week ended up being somewhat volatile, but what else is new. Dry weather in Argentina helped push grains higher for a couple of days until a wetter forecast showed up late in the week. Tariff talk was loud all week as we approached the February 1 deadline. This led to a downside in the markets last Friday, especially in the corn market as Mexico is our largest corn buyer. As of Friday afternoon, tariffs against Mexico and Canada were set to start Saturday. No one likes tariffs, especially when it affects your livelihood like farming. Hopefully these can be resolved soon, and the markets return to trading on supply and demand like they should. Last week corn ended down 4 cents while beans were down 14 cents. For the month of January corn was up 23 cents and beans were up 31 cents. The board did offer some rally days, and several took advantage of those markets. Locally, basis levels have weakened due to the amount of nearby grain that was bought. This has put a decent carry into the spring markets. New crop prices continue to drag as traders seem to be waiting for better yield data from South America, and the planting intentions report that will be out in late March. The talk today is favoring more corn acres and less bean acres being planted this spring. The increase in spring nitrogen tells us this may be true.