TFM Morning Update 01-25-2024

CORN

Corn is unchanged to slightly lower this morning in quiet trade, but has been trending higher since last Thursday and is 15 cents off that low in the March contract.
On February 15, the USDA will hold its Ag Outlook meeting where planted corn acres will be estimated, and many analysts are looking for a decline of as much as 1.6 million acres.
Funds were estimated to have bought back 2,000 contracts of corn yesterday and appear to be slowly unraveling their very large net short position.
The world’s first plant which uses ethanol to produce jet fuel is set to open in the US and will use a combination of US corn and other raw materials.

Soybeans are slightly higher this morning but have been bouncing around on either side of unchanged which was similar to yesterday’s trade which ended with a small gain.
Soybean meal is higher again for the third consecutive day as it rebounds from oversold conditions. Soybean oil is slightly lower despite higher crude oil and a higher trend in palm oil.
Russia is set to export a significantly larger amount of vegetable oil this year at 6.5 million tonnes which is a third more than the previous year. This is a result of record seed crop harvests.
Due to falling vegetation density levels in Mato Grosso and Parana, major soybean growing areas in Brazil, total Brazilian production is now expected to shrink by 2% to an average guess of 149 mmt.

All three wheat classes are trading slightly higher this morning and have continued their trend up recently despite little bullish news. This action indicates that the funds may be buying back some of their net short position.
SovEcon has raised their estimate for Russian wheat production by 0.9 mmt to 92.2 mmt citing good conditions with an abundant snow cover on the winter crops.
Ukraine has taken back control of the Black Sea shipping route for the most part and is now shipping millions of tons of food. The problems in the Red Sea however could threaten trade with Asia.
Estimates for today’s export sales report have wheat between 200k and 800k tons for an average of 518k tons. Last week’s exports were better than expected.

Amanda Brill