Corn is lower and hitting contact lows again with wheat early Tuesday, with soybeans and cattle higher.
Corn Hits More Contract Lows
Brady Huck with Advance Trading, Inc. says corn continues to grind into new contract lows with a strong crop rating of 73% good to excellent on Monday, unchanged for the last three weeks and above the 67% rating last year.
That, plus favorable weather have been driving yields models higher and private firm StoneX released their national corn yield estimate late Monday at 188.1 bushels, 7 bushels above trend line.
This is weighing on futures early Tuesday.
Export Demand for Corn is Strong
The market continues to ignore the strong demand especially on the export front with export inspections on Monday at 47.5 million bushels for corn, bringing total commitments to 28% above a year ago.
Private exporters reported sales of 128,000 metric tons of corn for delivery to unknown destinations during the 2025/2026 marketing year. However, the sale was corrected as it was originally released by USDA as a soybean sale.
Soybeans Add Weather Premium?
Soybean futures are higher seeing continued short covering to correct the oversold status of the market.
However, Huck says soybeans are also seeing some support from the extended weather forecast with some drier conditions predicted for the end of August which could trim yields and so traders are adding risk premium.
Plus, the crop rating on beans dropped 1% on Monday to 69% good to excellent, which is only 1% above last year.
StoneX pegged soybean yields at 53.5 bushels per acre, a bushel above USDA.
Brady says the market is concerned about the lack of new crop export business and so it would be nice to see some sales to China.
Wheat Makes More Contract Lows
Wheat futures ground into new contract lows in all three classes already this week and struggle on spillover from contract lows in corn and a higher dollar index.
Huck says there are also some extra bushels that are being priced into the market with a strong crop in his state of Kansas and other areas of the world.
Cattle Higher With Record Cash
Cattle futures continue to move higher in response to record cash and try to heal after last Thursday’s reversals on the charts.
Cash trade was at a record $243.17 last week and up $4.21 from the previous week.
Huck says everyone wants to know if the high is in but it will take a while to turn the fundamentals.
While there is some rebuilding taking place it is very slow but Huck says there may start to be some heifers retained as producers don’t want the tax consequence of selling both steers and heifers at record prices.
So far there has been no indication record prices are cooling yet on cash or that consumers are backing away from beef.
However, with packers cutting kills this week there is some concern about how long they will be willing to pay record prices for cattle.
