Grains Give Back Gains
Mar 18, 2013
Good Morning! Paul Georgy with early morning comments for March 18, 2013 at 5:05 am. Grains futures are lower. Corn and wheat give back some of last week’s gains and soybeans continue the slide. The US Dollar's sharp rally is providing some headwinds for the bulls. Traders are watching the weather forecast for the Midwest which currently has another system moving through later this week. Planting delays are already being talked about. We are only ten days away from a very important report from the USDA. On March 28th, we get the Prospective Plantings and Quarterly Grain Stock Reports. Managed Money Funds last week increased long positions in corn by 24,807 contracts, soybeans by 11,048 contracts. They reduced their short positions in wheat by 4,767 contracts. A Brazilian analyst put their double crop corn production 4.8 mmt higher than USDA. The next 2 weeks will be very choppy with USDA report concerns and spreaders dominating much of the volatility between old crop and new crop pricing. For cattle, the four week average slaughter is running 5% lower than last year. This week’s Cattle on Feed report will confirm that feedlots are holding 6% fewer cattle than last year. Lean hog futures continued to struggle with Chinese media coverage of their "hog dumping" problem which is hurting their pork demand. Choice beef was down .56 and select was down 1.20 on Friday. The Feeder Cattle index is 137.19. Pork cutout values were up 1.51 on Friday.
Markets as of 5:05 AM
- May Corn -5 3/4
- May Beans -15
- May Wheat -8 1/2
- Apr Cattle Steady-Lower
- Apr Hogs Steady-Lower
- Jun Dlr +.32
- Jun S&P -12.25
- Apr Crude -.82
- Apr Gold +10.20
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