Wednesday June 30, 2010

Factoid of the day: In 1778 Gen. George Washington marked July 4 with a double ration or rum for his soldiers and an artillery salute.

Good afternoon bloggers! Today was a great day for the market. Immediately after opening corn shot up to +30 cents and floated around that most of the day. Nearby corn closed +29 cents at $3.63. Fall corn closed +29 cents at $3.74. Though corn was able to jump 30 cents and hold it, soybeans were unable to hold on to its early bounce into positive ground. Nearby beans hit $9.54 early in the day, but closed down half a penny at $9.31. Fall beans didn't perform any better and closed at $9.02 down -7 cents. Nearby wheat was up +23 cents and closed at $4.80.

Today's USDA report took everyone by surprise. I think the only people that tell you otherwise are telling the yarn of a century. The bullish report today was exactly what we needed to see after a 7 straight negative trading sessions and after hitting an 8-month low. The knee jerk reaction was very friendly and showed that the market desperately needed corn. Soybean stocks(571mil. bu.) were 21 million bushels lower than last report (592mil. bu.)and is the smallest since 2004. Though soybeans stocks were down, soybean acreage was up 600K acres. This could explain why new crop beans were down for a good portion of the day, but nearby beans slowly bled the cents it gained early.

Corn had both bullish stock and acreage numbers. Corn was down 303 million bushels since the last report and was down 1.4 million acres since the last report as well. This is one of the reasons corn was expected to open, stay, and close at +20 to 30 cents. Hopefully the upward momentum will carry over into tonight and tomorrow for corn and the other commodities. It would be nice to see beans perform well tomorrow, but only time will tell.

I hope you all have a fun and safe Fourth of July weekend!

Don't tread on me,
Nathaniel Dubravec