Weekly Data Dump: April 29, 2019

“Man who picks bottom gets stinky fingers.”

-Old Chinese Proverb

CORN MARKET UPDATE:

WEEKLY CORN MARKETING THOUGHTS:

I’m running late this week because I was planting beans late last Friday to beat the rain!
While the past week in grain prices was UGLY, it sure feels like the market let loose a whole bunch of bad mojo. While I’m not fond of picking bottoms, I will say that in the past few sessions the news flow feels a bit more supportive of grain prices.
Compared to a week ago, the outlook for planting progress looks considerably more suspect. The planting pace the next two weeks will likely decide whether the market will care or not.
The seasonal tendency for price recovery is as strong as it gets the next two weeks, which will include the May WASDE supply & demand report. The May WASDE is traditionally the first month to project fundamentals for the new crop year.
I’m feeling friendly enough with the idea of better corn prices that on Friday, and into the weekend I was mulling over converting some of my sales into “Minimum Price” contracts (i.e. re-ownership with a call option) as I am aggressively sold on 2018 and 2019 corn. However, a large portion of my sales are via participation in averaging contracts and managed futures, so I really have plenty of upside opportunity left. Therefore, buying a call option right now just feels like a speculative expense.
Speaking of the averaging contract, at three weeks in it is currently running at 3.84 CZ’19.
Regarding my sales, I’m currently 60% priced on old-crop, and 30% priced on 2019 new-crop, and about 15% priced on 2020 new-crop. I’m still working on a good way to show my grain positions graphically, and I will hopefully have something to share in the next few weeks.
This week I’m not planning to make any new sales, but I still have four target orders working, with the first to hit at 3.94. HOLD!

SOYBEAN MARKET UPDATE:

Did I already mention that the market was UGLY last week?
There was tons of blah blah blah about ASF, South American crops/currency, and some planting progress last week to kick the soybean market in the shins (against the normal seasonal tendency).
The market dropped hard last week and is now down to about the same level as the worst moments last summer.
Thankfully I’m nearly 100% sold on 2018 crop, and 27% sold for 2019, but the clock’s ticking for a some sort of bounce. I’m going to continue to avoid making new soybean sales again this week, except our averaging contract will begin on Thursday, and I plan to put a few bushels into that to “round out” the program (so we can sell a round number of soybeans every week).