Old Crop Corn Held on Pullback

Wednesday’s session brought mostly a broad pullback for ag commodities, though old crop wheat futures were a glaring exception. For old crop corn, the midweek weakness settled with just a fractional loss in May. May was down by as much as 14 1/2 cents during the day, and overnight was up by more than 22 cents. New crop corn settled with double digit losses of 15 1/2 to 16 3/4 cents. 

Dalian Corn Prices were at life of contract highs, with another 21 yuan gain to 2,864 yuan/MT (~ $11.51/bu). Their new crop November corn price in China was also 25 yuan/MT higher to 2,879 yuan/MT (~ $11.57/bu). That board carry compares with the domestic $1.12 inverse. 

Ahead of the weekly Export Sales report, the trade is looking for USDA to report between 600k and 1.2 MMT were sold during he week that ended 2/24. New crop corn bookings are expected to be below 400k MT. 

Weekly EIA data shows ethanol producers averaged 997k barrels of production per day during the week that ended 2/18. That was down 27k barrels per day from the week prior and was just the 2nd week below 1m since October. Ethanol stocks retreated by 574k barrels to 24.933 million. 

Mar 22 Corn  closed at $7.39, down 3/4 cent,

Nearby Cash  was $7.03 1/1, down 1 7/8 cents,

May 22 Corn  closed at $7.25, down 3/4 cent,

Dec 22 Corn  closed at $6.09 1/4, down 15 1/2 cents,

New Crop Cash  was $5.97, down 15 5/8 cents,