Mark's Market Talk for May 20, 2024

We had mixed closes last week as corn was 17 cents lower while beans gained 9 cents. Weather continues to be the hot topic along with planting progress. We are now getting down to crunch time for corn planting so this afternoon’s progress report along with a wet weather forecast could have a bearing on the market direction this week. We will also have a 3- day weekend coming up, which gives traders anxiety this time of year as they don’t want to get caught on the wrong end of things. In the past 2 weeks the funds have covered a high majority of their short positions in both corn and beans. That gave us some short rallies that did not last very long. There have been enough producers willing to sell on these 5 and 10 cent bumps to keep the pipeline flowing, but the trade knows there is still a large amount of grain, especially corn, in the producer’s hands. If something does not move these markets higher in the next 2 weeks, it will take poor summer weather to give us a leg up. However, we have seen the value of the hybrids we have today and how well they handle stress. It will take a lot of bad weather to get us the prices we want, and then you must hope we are not in the middle of the results from bad weather.

For those that get Farm Journal the current issue has some firsthand stories from Ukrainian farmers. Once you read this it is easy to say our problems pale to what they are dealing with as the war wages on around them. No good will ever come from this conflict.