Market Report: Corn and Beans Lower Thursday

Corn traded higher in the overnight session but began to fade during the day Thursday before closing 3-4 cents lower. September corn set a calendar year low close. The longer range forecast continues to call for warmer, drier weather in August. However, with rain on the radar traders did not seem to be concerned. Export sales were termed neutral by traders at 17.3 million bushels of old crop and 18.8 million bushels of new crop. Year to date corn sales are at 1.9 billion bushels, which is 1 percent over the USDA July estimate.

Thursday beans gave back about all of Wednesday's gains, closing 6-8 cents lower. Beans too traded higher in the overnight session but disappeared quickly when the weekly export sales numbers were released. It showed a cancellation of 100,000 MT of old crop beans. Traders concentrated on that number and not the 24.9 million bushels of new crop beans that were sold. In addition, the USDA announced 16.7 million bushels of beans were sold to China and an unknown destination. Both corn and beans are in weather markets and traders look at the weather as "ideal."