Corn Up a Penny for Friday

The corn market is sitting fractionally to 1 ¼ cents in the black so far for Friday. December contracts saw a tighter overnight range from -1 ¼ to +2 ½ cents. Corn prices traded in back and forth action on Thursday before finishing the day within a penny of UNCH. The Dec contract printed a 5 ¼ cent range on the day. Preliminary open interest rose 8,460 contracts , primarily in the March and May ’24 contracts.

There were no deliveries against September corn overnight, with the oldest long dated 4/21/23.

Analysts are looking for corn ending stocks to be 60.2 mbu tighter for new crop, but 2.6 mbu looser for old crop at 1.83 bbu and 1.347 bbu respectively. The survey respondents estimate USDA will publish a 173.5 bpa national average corn yield on Tuesday. That’d be a 1.6 bpa loss. The full range of estimates are from +0.2 to -4.1 bpa. 

Traders expect old crop corn sales to range from 200k MT of net cancelations to 100k MT of net new business for the week that ended 8/31. Trade estimates for this morning’s new crop weekly sales run between 400k MT and 1 MMT. 

The Buenos Aires Grains Exchange estimates Argentine output at 55 MMT rebounding from the drought impaired 34 MMT crop this season. That would 827 million bushels of additional production for the world market to absorb in 2024 vs. 2023. 

EIA’s weekly data showed ethanol producers averaged 1.012 million barrels per day during the week that ended 9/1. The weekly stocks data had 12k barrels more in supply through the week with 21.621 million barrels. 

Sep 23 Corn  closed at $4.70 3/4, down 3/4 cent, currently up 1/4 cent

Nearby Cash   was $4.73 1/4, up 7/8 cent,

Dec 23 Corn  closed at $4.86 1/4, up 1/2 cent, currently up 1 1/4 cents

Mar 24 Corn  closed at $5.00, unch, currently up 1 cent