Another Lower Week For Corn and Beans

It was another typical week for corn futures. We did not collapse but Friday we saw another contract low. At least there were not any sell stops just below the contracts lows which would have pushed corn even lower. For the week March corn lost 5-1/4 cents. It did not seem to help that the USDA announced a daily sale Friday morning of 5.3 million bushel of old crop corn was sold to Costa Rica. While the USDA December report was not bearish it did not seem to help. However, the USDA did raise the projections for beef and pork production plus raised ethanol  production.

Beans did manage to close Friday only slightly lower but since early December beans have lost about 22 cents a bushel. Traders did not concede the weather in South America was less than ideal but now that more rain was in the forecast they are selling beans on improving weather. I guess that is the bias farmers have to learn to deal with. There was a lot of good demand news on Friday. The USDA announced a daily sale of 9.4 million bushel of beans sold to China and another 4.6 million bushel sold to an unknown destination. Plus the NOPA crush of 163.5 million bushel was another monthly record. However, it seems there can never be enough demand to satisfy the bears.