Mark's Market Talk for June 30, 2025

I will start this blog by saying the June USDA acreage and stocks reports are out this Monday at 11:00am and they can totally change anything that is printed below.

We can start with last week’s activity. December corn ended the week down 14 cents, we got some help Friday as it was up 6 cents. It is hard to say if this was some short covering ahead of the report, or it could be some thought we had gone down far enough for the week. The funds were short, around 182,000 corn contracts, which is somewhat large ahead of pollination. November beans ended last week down 36 cents. Just like corn they had an up day on Friday which softened the week a bit. The funds were long, about 23,000 contracts, which isn’t a large number if the report is neutral or positive. The average guesses on stocks are 4.65 billion corn, which is down about 350 million bushels from a year ago. Bean stocks are estimated at 980 million bushels compared to 970 million a year ago. The big numbers that everyone is waiting for are the planted acreages. The average guess for corn is 95.35 million acres. The bean guess is 83.7 million acres. The spring weather in many areas was great which may mean more acres of something was planted. There were also some wet areas where the crops did not get planted timely, if at all. The current weather pattern throughout most of the corn belt continues to be good which may lead to record yields once again. The second crop corn in South America is a record setter and they will have the export market for a longer period than normal. Going forward the trade will be directed by Monday’s report numbers and the early July weather that will get us through pollination.