Good Week for the Grains

It could have been a tough week for corn as the USDA raised the national average yield by 1.9 bushel an acre to 171.8 bushel an acre in the October report. That would be the second highest corn yield in history. Remember last years record of 174.6 bushel an acre. Again this month the average trade guess was to drop the national corn yield estimate. However, even with the bearish USDA estimate corn closed higher Thursday and Friday. In fact the charts look very encouraging with corn posting a double bottom and a bullish key reversal.

Soybeans did well last week too even with the USDA report. The national average yield was dropped about .4 bushel an acre and that dropped projected carryover by 45 million bushel. That pushed beans up around 22 cents Thursday and another 8 cents a bushel Friday. Traders are also hearing reports that many of the early harvested beans were very dry around 10 percent moisture. Harvesting beans at 10 percent instead of 13 percent would represent a yield loss of 2 bushel an acre. That does not even take into account the higher shatter loss. There are still a lot of unknowns about this years corn and bean crop.