Markets Mixed Today

Corn held better today, with losses of about 2 cents, which was not as bad as Tuesday's losses of about 5 cents. The USDA announced a daily sale of 100,000 MT of U.S. corn was sold to Columbia. That is the third sale to Columbia in the past few days. The Energy Information Administration showed ethanol production increased 19,000 barrels per day from the previous week. Ethanol stocks actually dropped 100,000 barrels even with the increased production. What appeared to really hit corn today was the crude oil and U.S. stock market that were seeing big losses.

Beans closed about unchanged to a penny lower. Beans were held in check by the falling stock market and crude oil along with the advancing harvest in South America. With all the bearish news in the bean market, I did see one encouraging report from the International Grains Council. Apparently U.S. offers for beans on the International Market is $341 per ton. That is just $9 a ton higher than Brazil. When you consider that there are 160 ships waiting to be loaded in South American ports, economic turmoil in Brazil and Argentina, and big swings in currency values you have to think our beans are cheaper than South America!