Lots of Action in the Grain Markets Today!

Traders had a lot of information to digest today. Last Friday after the close the USDA released the Quarterly Hog and Pig Report. This got a lot of attention because of the PED Virus killing a lot of baby pigs. The numbers came in quite a bit higher than expected indicating that fewer baby pigs were killed than feared. Than this morning at 11:00 am the USDA released the Stocks numbers on the grains. For corn stocks the average guess was 7.110 billion bushel. The USDA said we had 7.006 billion bushel on hand. Soybean stocks came in at 992 million bushel and the average trade guess was 989 million bushel. Finally all wheat stocks were 1.055 billion bushel compared to the average trade guess of 1.034. These numbers were termed maybe a little friendly. For the perspective plantings report the USDA said farmers will plant 81.5 million acres of soybeans this year. The average trade guess was 81.4 million acres. For corn the USDA said 91.7 million acres while the average trade guess was 92.9 million acres. Finally all wheat at 55.8 million acres with the average trade guess of 56 million. Looking at all the numbers I did not think any were "earth shattering" but in the first couple of minutes after the release we saw some big moves both up and down. This is another one of those days when the close will be far more important in indicating the future trend than the wild action during the session.