Friday, January 10, 2014

Corn Futures Soar on USDA Reports

Following up on "Commodities: Four Big USDA Reports This Morning".
Near month (Mar) up 19'6 at 431'6 (+4.79%). Top tick was $4.33.
From AgWeb:

Corn and Bean Stocks Higher, Wheat Lower

There's a lot of grain in the world, and producers have incentive to move it.

U.S. stocks of corn and soybeans have built substantially, but wheat stocks are dropping. Still, stocks of all three crops are more than adequate.
"There’s a lot of grain in the world, and growing conditions are good," says Brad Paulson of Northern Crops Marketing and Investments in Langdon, N.D. Paulson was the commentator on a post-report MGEX press call. At the same time, producers have a lot of incentive to move it.

"This grain wants to move," Paulson says. "Producers need money. Taxes are due. Machinery and land payments are due."

He recommends producers sell soybeans into any rallies, but wait to see stronger rallies in wheat and corn before letting go of supplies.

USDA’s long-awaited quarterly Grain Stocks report, released Jan. 10, provided the first snapshot of feed use of corn for the 2013-14 crop. According to USDA, corn stored in all positions on Dec. 1, 2013, totaled 10.4 billion bushels, 30% more than a year earlier. Of the total stocks, 6.38 billion bushels were stored on farms, 39% more than last year. Off-farm stocks of 4.05 billion bushels were also larger, up 17% from a year ago.

Indicated use of corn for the first quarter, September through November, of 4.32 billion bushels compares with 3.74 billion bushels during the same period last year.

"I question (the first-quarter use) number," Paulson says. "Livestock producers are using corn more efficiently. They bought corn on the way down, and demand has been good, but cattle numbers are still low. When corn prices got so high, they learned how to use corn more efficiently."

The larger-than-expected corn disappearance number drew quarterly corn stocks below the expected 10.79 billion bushels. Stocks, however, were still within the range of estimates of 10.025 billion to 11.25 billion. Last year at this time, corn stocks were much lower at 8.033 billion bushels....MORE
AgWeb is doing their total team coverage thing:
Complete Coverage of Jan. 10 USDA Reports

Five-minute chart from FinViz:

Next up, tallow!
From Tuesday's "Nuveen Strategist: "Gold, Commodities to Fall Again in 2014"":
Yeah that's pretty much the way to be positioned. Except maybe for corn trading up 20% from here.
And copper could surprise on the upside. And tallow....