Corn Rallying Ahead of USDA Reports

Corn prices are trading with 3 to 4 cent gains so far on Thursday morning. Futures closed out the Wednesday session with contracts fractionally to 1 ½ cents higher. December settled at $4.04 ¾. The cmdtyView cash index was up ½ cent on the day to $3.69 ¼. There were 52 deliveries against September futures overnight.

EIA data released yesterday morning showed 1.08 million barrels per day of ethanol production for the week that ended on September 6. That was an improvement of 19,000 bpd from the week prior. Weekly stocks were back up 360,000 barrels to 23.714 million barrels by that date. Refiner inputs of ethanol dropped 41,000 bpd to 892,000 barrels per day. Ethanol exports were back up 86,000 barrels per day in that week to 177,000 bpd.

Export Sales data is expected to show net new crop sales of 700,000 MT to 1.6 MMT during the week of September 5 according to a Reuters survey of analysts. 

Ahead of today’s USDA reports, US ending stocks are expected to be down ~8 mbu to 1.859 bbu for the old crop figure. New crop is seen dropping by 41 mbu to 2.032 bbu according to a Bloomberg survey, mainly due to the smaller estimated production. As for the world, traders estimate the stocks total to be down 0.8 MMT to 309.4 MMT.

Argentina’s 2024/25 corn crop is estimated to be in a range of 51 to 52 MMT according to the Rosario Grain Exchange. CONAB released updated corn projections for the 2023/24 crop, raisin the production total by just 0.07 MMT to 115.72 MMT.

Sep 24 Corn  closed at $3.80 1/2, up 1 cent, currently unch 

Nearby Cash  was $3.69 1/4, up 1/2 cent,

Dec 24 Corn  closed at $4.04 3/4, up 1/2 cent, currently up 4 cents cents

Mar 25 Corn  closed at $4.23 1/2, up 1/4 cent, currently up 3 3/4 cents 

New Crop Cash  was $3.69 1/4, up 1/2 cent,