Mark's Market Talk for March 17, 2025

Let’s talk about the highlights from last week’s grain markets. Wait a minute, there are no highlights from last week. The funds continued their sell off that started 3 weeks ago. They shed almost another 100,000 corn contracts as May futures lost 10 cents. If there is a good side to this, it might be they have lowered their position enough we might see a rally if we find a spark somewhere. Just not sure where or what that spark will be. Today the tariff talk is still center stage and probably will be for the near future. Hopefully at the very least we can resolve the issues with Canada and Mexico as they are 2 of our biggest markets. Japan is also a major trading partner and so far, they have avoided most of the attention to date, and that is good for all of us. May beans were down 9 cents for the week. They closed on a positive note last Friday which helped cut their loss for the week. The funds bought 20,000 contracts last week and are currently close to even. The Brazil harvest is past halfway done, and they continue to dominate the world market with cheaper beans. With the world flush in beans, it will take a short US crop to stimulate prices. The monthly stocks report came out last Tuesday and there were very minimal changes, both here and worldwide. The bigger report will be out on the 28^th of this month when we see what the USDA predicts for planted acres. So far, the common thought is we will plant a whole lot of corn at the expense of bean and cotton acres. The new crop prices still support this happening. That does not mean there is currently a chance to lock profits in on any of these crops. It just means today the odds of corn being profitable is greater than beans.