After a back and forth session, the nearby corn market ended with 1 ¾ to 2 ½ cent losses for Thursday. March printed a 5 ¾ cent range on the day from -3 ¾ to +2 cents.
USDA announced a private export sale to Mexico for 175k MT of 23/24 corn.
Trade ideas for USDA’s weekly Export Sales report this morning ran between 400k MT and 1 MMT of old crop corn booked during the week that ended January 4 and included the New Year’s holiday weekend. USDA put the actual net sales on the low end of estimates, at 487,600 MT. Colombia, Japan and Mexico were the largest buyers. Sorghum sales were 133,000 MT, all to China.
CONAB cut their estimate for Brazil’s corn production 925k MT, via a reduced area for 1st crop. CONAB had 1st crop output at 24.4 MMT, with 91.2 MMT expected for 2nd crop and a 23/24 total output of 117.6 MMT. That is down from 132 MMT last year and is 11.4 MMT below the December USDA figure.
Analysts expect USDA will reduce the Brazilian corn crop by 2.5 MMT on average to 126.5 MMT on Friday. With delayed and replanted soybeans, the Brazilian 2nd corn crop is expected to get a late start as well. Pre-report estimates for Argentina range from a 1.5 MMT cut to a 1 MMT boost with 54.8 (-200k) MMT representing the average trade guess.
Weekly ethanol production rose, to an average of 1.062 million barrels per day. Corn use for ethanol is running about 7% above year ago, while USDA was looking for a full year gain of about 3% in December.
Mar 24 Corn closed at $4.57 3/4, down 1 3/4 cents,
Nearby Cash was $4.32, down 1 3/8 cents,
May 24 Corn closed at $4.69 3/4, down 1 3/4 cents,
Jul 24 Corn closed at $4.79, down 2 1/4 cents,
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