Mark's Market Talk for September 30, 2024

Last week was an unusual early harvest week in the markets. We are looking at possible record production and yet we were strongly higher for corn and beans. December corn ended the week 16 cents higher, while November beans were 54 cents higher. It appears there were 2 primary factors responsible for this. South America remains dry and that may cause planting delays. Here we say, “plant in the dust your bins will bust”. Down there I think the saying is if you plant in the dust, you may go bust. One good shower across their primary growing area would threaten our prices very quickly. It seems their forecast changes twice a day and you can see that in the ups and downs of the daily trade. The other factor is the funds wanting to even things up as they are trying to shed some of their short positions. Some of these traders have built a large short position and now they want to cash in while the profits are there for the taking. At the end of last week, the funds were still short the market in corn and beans, but they have reduced their position by more than half of where it was 3 weeks ago. Compare this to a gas tank and we had an almost full tank 3 weeks ago and today we are below half. If they continue their current trend the low fuel light may come on and that would be our signal that the help from this factor is about used up. That would leave us with weather as our primary driver. Early yield reports continue to come in. Right now, from the reports I have seen from across the Midwest, there has been more positive reports than negative ones. Some of the negative yield reports are coming from high producing areas that had planting issues this spring. Will this add up to enough yield loss to offset the record setting yields we are seeing in other areas? The answer to this has yet to be given.