Chicago Board of Trade Market News
Outlook: Feed grain markets presently seem to have a bearish bias. This stems from negative-looking charts that are encouraging discussion of the potential bird flu while paying less attention to factors such as larger-than-expected U.S. cattle placements on feed and growing export sales purchases at present price-levels.
Temperatures across the U.S. Corn Belt are increasing as we move into May and there is no excess moisture causing sustained delays in planting. However, the planting pace and corn emergence rate continues to lag behind the five-year average. Point being, normalcy is presently being treated as a bearish factor because of predisposed perceptions. This condition is important to note because it can result in rather fickle market action. For example, the recent sell-off in corn caused most technical indicators to turn bearish and suggest selling. However it would not take much of a rebound before the present sell off in corn contracts started to appear as the left side of an inverted head-and-shoulders chart pattern. Market commentaries could then flip and start to search for fundamental reasons why prices could go higher. The outlook is that vacillating and unpredictable price action is likely to be particularly pronounced when fundamental factors are primarily being sought to justify technical charts and the resulting trades.