Chicago Board of Trade Market News
Outlook: USDA’s May 10 WASDE report made clear that both corn production and consumption are getting larger. Despite the May 19 retrenchment, corn has achieved bullish momentum and has been trading above trend. That is impressive considering the very positive weather outlook for the Corn Belt, and while attention has finally turned to that factor it was the rising dollar that served as the trigger. Until this week, momentum was a more important focus than the weather. In short, U.S. corn is going to be highly competitive for several weeks to come.
Exports are key and after a two-month hiatus, U.S. corn exports to China bounced back in March to put first quarter volume ahead of the two previous years, albeit at a lower price. Indeed, U.S. corn exports are booming altogether as this made the ninth week out of the past 11 in which sales exceeded 1 MMT. Sales reported for this past week were 1,473,100 MT of old crop and 540,700 MT of new crop corn.