Corn Weakens Overnight

Dec corn futures have traded back up by 1 ½ cents over the past half hour to finish the early trade, however the overnight session had pushed the market 3 3/4 cents in the red. The front month prices are looking 1 ½ to 2 ¾ cents weaker into Tuesday’s day action. Corn dropped sharply at the day session open on Monday and hung there for much of the day. Corn ended with 4 ¼ to 4 ¾ cent losses across the front months. Preliminary open interest shows net new selling, rising 16,226 contracts. CME also confirmed 1.75k new calls were opened yesterday though the put/call ratio still favors pus by 1.052:1. 

The weekly NASS Crop Progress report showed 10% of the corn crop has yet to enter the dent stage, while 54% was mature as of 9/17. That compares to 87% and 44% on average respectively. NASS showed corn harvest advanced 4% points to 9% complete – which remains 2 ppts ahead of average. The remaining condition ratings scored 7% VP, 13% P, 29% F, 43% G, and 8% E for a Brugler500 rating of 332. That is down 5 points on the Brugler500 Index from last week, with the most notable drops in CO, IL, and OH. 

USDA’s weekly Export Inspections data showed 642,095 MT of corn shipments from the week that ended 9/14. That was up 16.7k MT from last week and was 92.5k MT higher yr/yr. Mexico and Japan were the top destinations, though China was the destination for all 47k MT of the white corn shipments. USDA marked the MYTD total at 1.267 MMT through the first 2-weeks – up 120k MT from last season’s pace. 

Chinese Custom’s data had 1.2 MMT of corn imports for August. That was down 33% from Aug ’22. The year-to-date total was 12% lower than 2022 with 14.9 MMT through August. 

Dec 23 Corn  closed at $4.71 1/2, down 4 3/4 cents, currently down 1 3/4 cents

Nearby Cash   was $4.46 7/8, down 5 cents,

Mar 24 Corn  closed at $4.85 3/4, down 4 3/4 cents, currently down 1 1/2 cents

May 24 Corn  closed at $4.94 1/2, down 4 1/2 cents, currently down 1 3/4 cents