Corn Prices Dip to One-Month Lows as Analysts Spar Over What’s Driving Down Prices

Corn prices came under pressure Tuesday. With July corn falling 37 cents to end the day to close at $6.20, the closing price marked a one-month low.

Analysis to digest Tuesday’s close was mixed. Some analysts pointed to planting progress and Midwest rains as a couple bearish factors weighing on the market.

“I think there are some fundamentals here,” Joe Vaclavik of Standard Grain told Chip Flory Tuesday’s AgriTalk. “I mean, you have a crop that’s recently planted in the central and western Corn Belt. And there’s going to be a lot of rain here over the next week. I think that a lot of this, in my opinion at least, has to do with weather. We’re off to a good start. I think we’ve got a lot of potential.”

Vaclavik said while there’s still a large chunk of the growing season left to trade, and debate about the size of the 2021 crop isn’t going away, the crop potential currently planted in the fields is high, hence what hindered prices Tuesday.

“What you just described to me sounds like a drift lower, you know, two or three cents and then a nickel. Two or three cents, then a dime,” Flory said to Vaclavik on AgriTalk. “It doesn’t feel like 40 cents dropping in old crop futures with what you just described.”

“Well, if this was the market of say 2014 through mid-2020, I would agree with you,” Vaclavik responded. “But when old crop corn’s above $6 and new crop corn is above $5, these ranges are just par for the course. This is not something that should be surprising. When there’s a down day, it’s going to be bigger than it was a year and a half ago. That’s just the environment that we’re in.”

Garrett Toay of AgTraderTalk agrees with Vaclavik: the main driver of the markets today is weather.

“The focus is weather,” Toay told Flory. “It’s May. We’re getting into the seasonality of the growing season, and yes, we have a lot of old demand here. China’s still accelerating their inspection rates the last two to three weeks. But it’s the expectations of increased corn acres, it’s 90% planted, which is 10%, above the average. And we have rain in the forecasts...the sky is the limit as far as what production is in the U.S.”

Not everyone agreed that fundamentals were the main driver of Tuesday’s action. Similar to Vaclavik’s market sentiments, Arlan Suderman of StoneX Group pointed out on social media that the market action isn’t about the fundamentals anymore.

Corn futures were also a weight on other commodities, with soybeans and wheat futures also ending the day in the red.