Mark's Market Talk for June 23, 2025

Another rough week for old crop corn as the July contract closed 16 cents lower as the trade thinks we have ample supplies to get us to new crop. However, terminal basis levels have improved lately as producers seem to be holding the last of their corn until after pollination. The December contract finished the week 2 cents lower as non- threatening weather is friendly to trend line yields. The June USDA crop reports will be next week, and they contain planted acreages and a stocks report. Last week July beans closed 2 cents lower while the November contract was 6 cents higher. Several terminals have rolled to the November contract to set their prices from now to October. The biofuel news is becoming stale, and we need some poor weather to help move prices higher. The war in the Middle East will probably have an impact on commodity prices, but at this point it is hard to say what this impact might be. Currently the funds are short on the corn market, over 170,000 contracts while they are long 20 or 30,000 contracts of beans. It is somewhat unusual for them to be this short prior to pollination. 2 weeks of hot dry weather in early July may give this market the spark we need to move higher.