Friday was a mostly positive day for our markets. Spot corn closed up 14 1/2, spot soybeans closed up 26 1/4, spot winter wheat closed down 3 1/4 and spot spring wheat closed up 3/4. In the overnight trade all of our markets are on the positive side. Oil closed up $2.65 on Friday at $76.57 per barrel. It is stronger in trading again this morning with it now valued at $78.23 per barrel. Our dollar traded between a low of $0.693 US and a high of $0.695 US on Friday with it closing out at the low end of the range. With some choppy trading in the overnight session it is once again valued this morning at $0.693 US.
Last week was a positive week for our markets and this was mostly due to the USDA report on Friday. Spot corn prices were up $8 per tonne for the week with this year’s harvest up $3 per tonne. Soybeans were up $13 per tonne for old crop and $8 per tonne for the 2025 harvest. HRS wheat was up $11 per tonne for old crop and $7 per tonne for the 2025 harvest. Winter wheat was up $1 per tonne for old crop and $2 per tonne for this year’s harvest.
The USDA did surprise our markets on Friday. The marketplace was looking for a decrease in corn yield of 0.5 bushels per acre however the USDA came in with a decrease of 3.8 bushels per acre. The new average yield is now 179.3 bushels per acre. They increased corn acres by 200,000 acres with the result being total production came in at 14.867 billion bushels. They also decreased feed usage and exports by a total of 75 million bushels after just increasing them last month. We should note that corn used for ethanol was left unchanged with this report. The final result was that year ending stocks for the current year were decreased by almost 200 million bushels. This helped to bring down world ending corn stocks to their lowest level in a decade. This report should be considered very bullish for corn.
They also decreased the soybean yield by more than trade expectations. The trade was looking for a decrease of only 0.1 bushels per acre whereas the USDA came in with a cut of 1.0 bushels per acre to peg yield at 50.7 bushels per acres. They also decreased harvested acres by 200,000. The net result was a decrease in carryout stocks down to 380 million bushels from the expected 470 million bushels. This is still an increase from last year with the stocks to use ratio increase from 8.3% last year up to 8.7% this year. This report should also be considered very bullish for soybeans.
For wheat the USDA made only some minor changes to the 24/25 US wheat balance sheet.
It is nice to see this morning that the market is feeding on the bullish signals given out with Friday’s report and is trading positive. Of course the next big market watch will be President Elect Donald Trump and how fast he moves on implanting the tariffs he has warned us all about. The general feeling is that the tariffs will have to be negative for our commodities however time will have to tell this story to its conclusion.