Grains start day mixed. Thursday, March 30, 2023

This morning corn is down ¹⁄₄ of a penny and soybeans are up a penny.

CBOT wheat is down 2¢. KC wheat is up 5¢. Minneapolis wheat is up 2¢.

China purchased more corn this morning, according to USDA. This time it was 178,000 metric tons of corn for the 2022/2023 marketing year.

The weekly USDA exports report also came out this morning. Corn exports for last week were pegged at 1,036,400 metric tons, within the trade’s expected range. Soybean exports were pegged at 348,200 metric tons, also within the expected range.

Nick Tsiolis, founder of Farmer’s Keeper, says there are a variety of factors in the market right now feeding the bulls.

“Bullish sentiment entering the grains again with ethanol production just barely over one million barrels per day, which isn’t a huge increase week-over-week, but a major mental level for markets,” he says. “Pair that with announcements from Cargill and Viterra to stop exporting Russian grain and sustained, albeit relatively small, buying [from] China, and we’ve got reasons to see a sustained uptrend if we have a cooperative Perspective Planting report tomorrow.”

Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist at StoneX, says add Louis Dreyfus to the list of companies backing out of Russia.

“Grain is expected to continue to flow out of Russia, but on Russia’s terms with less transparency over what’s happening inside the country,” he says. “The Russian farmer is ultimately the loser, which provides a disincentive for production going forward. The near-term market impact is to create uncertainty, leading speculative fund managers to exit large short positions, while drawing a bit more attention to problems in the U.S. southern and northern Plains that can impact output.”

Live cattle are currently up 48¢. Lean hogs are up 90¢. Feeder cattle are up 50¢.

Crude oil is up 3¢.

S&P 500 futures are up 21 points. Dow futures are up 89 points.

Tags: corn, soybeans, wheat, live cattle, feeder cattle, lean hogs