Weekly grain report

Byron Behne watches the international grain markets for the Odessa Union Warehouse.

4/5/12: Friday on a Thursday! Grain markets were closed for Good Friday and so were the Odessa Union’s offices.

The grain trade was mixed with soybeans continuing their post-report rally, corn closing up a penny, and wheat down fractionally although the deferred months were down a bit more on good crop condition ratings from earlier in the week. The dollar has been rallying this week, which has put pressure on most commodities but, the grains have faired pretty well, all things considered. Chicago wheat futures have given back about half of last Friday's rally this week, as wheat supplies remain comfortable overall and the new crop doesn’t have any significant frost threats on the horizon. Parts of the upper Midwest do have freeze warnings approaching, however it shouldn’t be cold enough to harm the wheat crop. Newly emerged, early-planted corn may be a different matter though. I’ll be out all of next week on vacation. Hopefully my voice returns by the time I get back from that.

4/9/12: Chicago wheat futures managed to hold small gains on Monday as corn and soybean futures both closed lower ahead of the USDA’s latest supply and demand report which will be out in the morning. The USDA has a habit of tempering either a bearish or bullish stocks report with offsetting data on the following supply and demand report. In this case the tighter than expected corn stocks number could be softened with a cut to projected demand, which would leave ending stocks a little looser than indicated they would be by the stocks report. The crop progress report shows corn 7% planted, which is 5% ahead of average and the winter wheat crop adding another 3% to the good to excellent categories.