Friday April 9, 2010

Factoid: The Chicago Cubs have not won a World Series since 1908. It has been over a century (100 years). That's a long time.

Happy Friday bloggers! Today corn closed down 2 cents @ $3.45. Soybeans closed up 6 cents @ $9.52. Gold is up .69%. Crude oil is down to $84.77/ barrel. Feeder cattle were up and lean hogs down on the day.

Today the USDA Report came out and left many scratching their heads with some numbers. USDA took 100mbu. of corn off of feed which raised USA carryout to 1.899bbu. Corn seemed to have a higher carryout, but not as much as we were thinking. World stocks were up 4.2mmt. Brazil's corn crop was increased 2.5mmt and Argentina's crop was left unchanged. Corn basis has remained steady while soybean basis has seemed to firm recently. CIF corn is bidding +42 cents. CIF soybeans are bidding at +30 cents. Morris nearby corn basis has remained strong at -5 cents.

USDA added 25 mbu. soybeans to export demand and decreased residual demand 25mbu. What confuses people is how will export demand for our beans increase when South America is going to start pumping out soybeans. I was thinking that with residual down, carryout would increase. 'Nay!' said the USDA. Rather than carryout increasing, export demand will increase. This left soybean carryout at 190mbu unchanged. World soybean stocks were up 2.3mmt. Morris soybean basis is -20 cents.

China seemed to react to rumors of import certs. and released about 40ish-mbu. from their reserves to appease Chinese processors. Great weather is being forecasted for the Corn Belt. Farmers are eager to get any remaining field work done and begin planted when we get a break in the weather. The Illinois River has crested and we are able to continue loading barges at our Morris and Ottawa Terminals. The weather is going to warm up later this weekend and is expect to remain nice for all of next week until Friday.

I hope you all have a great weekend.
Nathaniel Dubravec