Good Day for Corn and Beans Friday

Up until Friday it was a typical week for corn, grinding lower with traders hyping all kinds of negative news. All at once Friday morning corn took off and closed with gains of 5 to 6 cents a bushel. For the week December corn still finished down 1/2 cent and March lost 1-3/4 cents a bushel. The May contract still posted a life of contract weekly low close. With the funds holding a near record large short position for this time of year there was likely some short covering taking place. In addition open interest in December corn is more than 500,000 contracts. With December corn going into delivery in a few days that is a lot of position squaring that needs to take place that could create some fireworks!

The real excitement in the grain markets Friday was the bean market as beans saw gains of 15 to 18 cents a bushel. For the week January beans gained 3-1/2 cents. The funds are slightly long beans so it was not short covering that fueled the gains. More likely it was weather in South America. The dry northern part of Brazil received lighter rains than what the forecast called for. In addition Argentina is getting quite hot and dry and that may have been more the focus of traders. It is still early in the growing season in South America but it is nice to see that less than ideal weather at least has traders attention!