Markets Drift Lower Again

It was the seventh day in a row corn closed lower, posting losses of 1-2 cents. Well, I guess you could modify that as the nearby March contract was a 1/4 cent higher, but the other contracts were lower. The Dollar Index was a bit firmer and traders always fret about that but they never notice when the Dollar Index is lower. The real reason corn is having trouble holding is traders know world supplies are adequate. Even if the USDA overestimated the 2015 crop or underestimated demand by 300 or 400 million bushels, that would take carryover down to around 1.5 billion bushels. That is not burdensome but we are not going to run out of corn.

Beans did not do any better than corn. After being firmer on the open, beans closed down 2-3 1/2 cents. The USDA announced a daily sale of 140,000 MT of beans to an unknown destination. There were reports out of South America about how rapidly harvest is progressing and that reminded traders about all those beans hitting the world market. There was also an economic report on manufacturing data in China that was not good. That suggesting to traders that demand for beans from China will not increase.