For the week July corn lost 15 ¾ cents, December corn was 1 ¾ lower, July soybeans fell 1 ¾, November soybeans gained 6 cents, July soybean meal plunged $7.80, July bean oil soared 386 points, July hard red winter wheat gained 22 1/2, July soft red winter wheat was 24 higher, hard red spring wheat was up 4 ¾.
November soybeans had a higher weekly close but scored a reversal on Friday. The contract came close to the February 4 high of $10.75 ¾, rallying as high as $10.74 ¼ before failing and closing lower.
Jerry Gulke, president of the Gulke Group, says this technical action signals to him the November soybeans may have put in the high for the year and that the bullish news about EPA’s higher blending levels for bio-mass based diesel for 2026 is priced into the soybean and bean oil markets.
“I think it’s significant that when we made the high for the calendar year, we did it back in February before we knew what kind of crop we were going to have in Brazil, and it got bigger and bigger and bigger.So, now we nearly did it again on the back of good news from the EPA,” he says.
While EPA’s proposal was favorable Gulke says it is just a proposal and not a final rule.Plus, he points out the “devil is in the details.”Reading the fine print, he found out the EPA penalizes but does not ban foreign feed stocks from being used to produce biodiesel and renewable diesel, including Used Cooking Oil (UCO) from China.
“If we were going to use just soybeans to meet that new demand it’s an impossible task so to speak. However, if you read the fine print in the EPA suggestions, there’s a lot of feedstocks out there that will work,” he explains.
Gulke points out that in California’s low carbon fuel market they like to use used cooking oil better than soybean oil because it has a lower carbon footprint and it also keeps the whole “food verses fuel” debate from reemerging.
Gulke doesn’t think the biofuels news was a big enough demand story for soybeans or bean oil to continue to rally, especially with no major weather threat to the crop and the possible loss of at least a portion of the China soybean export market heading into the fall harvest.
The next big news for the soybean market will come in the USDA Acreage Report but Gulke is expecting much change in soybean acreage from the March intensions.
As a result, he advises producers to protect against downside risk in the soybean market. His firm sold an additional 10% to 15% of their new crop soybeans on Friday and made their first sale for 2026.
“These are up at the highest prices of 2025 for November soybeans, so we need to protect some of that. This is one heck of a good place to be wrong in soybeans,” he adds.
For more information contact Jerry at info@gulkegroup.com.
