Corn Weaker on Thursday AM

Corn futures are down 1 to 2 cents in most contracts on Thursday morning. The corn market popped back higher on Wednesday, with gains of 4 to 5 cents in the nearbys at the close. New crop contracts were slacking off, with December steady. Preliminary open interest data from CME showed a drop of 12,899 contracts, mostly in the May contract. There were another 83 deliveries issued for March corn overnight.  CmdtyView’s national average Cash Corn price was up 4 1/2 cents at $4.15 3/4.

President Trump is delaying part of the tariffs on Mexico and Canada by a month, with an exemption for auto under the condition they comply with the USMCA trade agreement. He reportedly is considering exempting certain ag products from the tariffs as well. 

Wednesday morning’s weekly EIA Petroleum report showed ethanol output back up 12,000 barrels per day in the week that ended on February 28, totaling 1.093 million bpd. Stocks were back down 282,000 barrels to 27.289 million barrels. Increased demand was a reason, as blender inputs were up 44,000 bpd wk/wk to 890,000 bpd, with gasoline product supplied (implied use) was the largest since the week of December 20 at 8.877 million bpd. 

Ahead of this morning’s Export Sales report, analysts expect to see between 0.7 and 1 MMT in 2024/25 corn bookings during the week of 2/27. New crop sales are seen at 0-100,000 MT. 

Mar 25 Corn  closed at $4.40 1/4, up 4 1/4 cents, currently unch 

Nearby Cash  was $4.15 3/4, up 4 1/2 cents,

May 25 Corn  closed at $4.55 3/4, up 4 1/4 cents, currently down 1 ½ cents

Dec 25 Corn  closed at $4.46 3/4, unch, currently down 2 cents

New Crop Cash  was $4.10 1/2, down 0 cent,