Corn prices are starting out Monday morning with fractional gains across the front months. The yellow one was up 2 ¾ to 3 cents on Friday. That left the May contract with a net 2 ¾ cent loss for the week. March did leave an expiration gap down near $4.20 on the continuation chart. CME reported OI dropped in the old crop futures for a net -12.5k contracts overall. Options open interest increased on Friday, with 8.7k new calls added and 6.9k new puts in play.
CFTC reported major short covering from the funds during the week that ended 3/12. Managed money traders dropped 37.6k short contracts (8% of existing); along with some net new buying interest that reduced their net short to a 9-wk low of 256k contracts. The commercial corn hedgers however added short hedges with +50k new shorts vs 7.2k new longs during the week. That flipped them back to net short by 31,068 contracts.
According to the traders at the BAGE, corn conditions in Argentina worsened last week, with the portion of the crop rated good/ex declining to 25% and the part rated poor/very poor increasing by the same 4 percentage points to 17%. Harvest for the late planted corn is just starting at around 3% completed.
May 24 Corn closed at $4.36 3/4, up 3 cents, currently up 3/4 cent
Nearby Cash was $4.11 1/4, up 3 5/8 cents,
Jul 24 Corn closed at $4.49, up 2 3/4 cents, currently up 3/4 cent
Dec 24 Corn closed at $4.70 3/4, up 3 cents, currently up 3/4 cent
On the date of publication, Alan Brugler did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Disclosure Policy here.
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
