Wednesday, January 21, 2026, 6:00 am

Tuesday was a negative day for our markets.  Spot corn closed down 1, spot soybeans closed down 4 3/4, spot winter wheat closed down 7 3/4 and spot spring wheat closed down 3.  In the overnight trade all of our markets are back on the positive side.  Oil closed up $1.02 yesterday at $60.36 per barrel.  It is weaker in trading this morning with it now sitting at $59.89 per barrel.  Our dollar has traded between a low of $0.722 US and a high of $0.724 US over the last 24 hours.  This morning it is right in the middle of the range with it currently valued at $0.723 US.

It was announced yesterday that China has now purchased the 12 million tonnes of soybeans that was set as a target with the yet unsigned ‘Trade Pact’ made last fall.  As soybeans have been less expensive from Brazil on the world market these purchases have been made by a couple of state owned trading companies.  Private companies in China have resorted to domestic auctions run by the state owned companies or have imported from Brazil.  We can see that the Chinese Government is subsidizing the purchases of the soybeans from the US.  Even with these purchases it really has not brought much strength to the US marketplace.  Remember the handshake agreement had a pledge in it to purchase 25 million tonnes of US soybeans for next year.  Let’s hope that those purchases do actually happen and that they start sooner rather than later.

Weather in Argentina has been very dry over the last two weeks and their current corn crop has dropped from an 82% good to excellent rating down to a 66% good to excellent rating.  This most definitely has taken some shine away from a record producing crop this year in Argentina but some timely rains over the next couple of weeks would go a long way in helping their yield prospects.  We should note that corn acreage in Argentina is up at 10% this year from last year.

It is nice to see this morning that our markets are on the positive side.  Traders will be watching close what fallout all of President Trump’s talk this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos has on our markets.  We all know that he can change the sentiment in the markets with one or two words and he is clearly keeping things interesting again this week.