Market Report: Another Disappointing Week

It was another typical week in the corn market as corn was 2-3 cents lower on Friday. For the week, corn was down about 6 cents in the lead March Contract. Corn had managed to close a bit higher for two weeks in a row, but we could not make it three weeks in a row. The Dollar Index was sharply lower earlier in the week and that did not seem to help corn, but it recovered a little on Friday and that had corn under pressure. The bears always seem to have it both ways right now. A lower Dollar Index does not help but it recovers a little bit and that is a reason to take corn lower. I suspect the larger issue was a weather system was forecast to bring rain to Argentina over the weekend. Traders did not really notice that it was getting very dry in Argentina, but now that rain was in the forecast crop conditions get even more "ideal." Again the bears can have it both ways!

It was again a similar story in beans as it was in corn. Beans closed 6-7 cents lower. For the week March beans lost about 15 cents. The attention for traders this next week is the USDA Supply Demand Report on Tuesday. Traders are expecting an increase in carryover here to 449 million bushels compared to the January estimate of 440 million bushels. World carryover is projected to decrease slightly from 79.28 MMT in the January estimate to 79.09 MMT. Those are both very minor changes, so maybe we could get a friendly surprise? Even if we do we the world is not going to run out of beans anytime soon.