Grain Outlook A quiet week for grain trading

The following marketing analysis is for the week ending Jan. 27.

CORN — It was a poor start to the week after better-than-expected weekend rains in Argentina. March corn sank to its lowest price since the Jan. 12 World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates report and the December corn matched the Jan. 12 low. The March contract then proceeded to bounce higher on fresh export demand and what looked like a drier extended outlook for Argentina. The December contract was unable to fill the gap it posted on the charts from $5.94 to $5.94.5 it left on Jan. 23 and consolidated within the Jan. 23 trading range for the balance of the week.

The news was uneventful this week, but export demand was apparent with fresh daily sales flashes of 9 million bushels of old crop to unknown announced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The weekly export sales report was within expectations at 35.8 million bushels. China’s U.S. corn purchases have essentially been filled with only 3.5 million bushels officially left to take. However, bushels have been switching from unknown to China. Cumulative export sales are 946.4 million bushels and continue to be 45 percent behind last year. The USDA is projecting year-on-year exports to be down 22 percent. We need to average 29 million bushels of sales per week to hit the USDA target.

Brazil’s corn exports for January were expected to be a record 5 million metric tons with February’s exports estimated at 3 mmt. New crop U.S. cumulative export sales are 49.8 million bushels compared to 57.2 million bushels last year.

The weekly ethanol report was not friendly to corn with production up a moderate 4,000 barrels per day to 1.01 million barrels; but stocks surged 1.68 million barrels to 25.08 million barrels. The stocks number is the highest in nine months. The three-week ethanol production number is down 4.3 percent from last year and stocks are up 2.5 percent from last year. The stocks figure was the largest week-on-week increase on record. Net margins improved 4 cents to 12 cents per gallon. Gasoline demand was up 88,000 bpd to 8.14 million bpd, but the four-week demand is down 4.7 percent from last year.

In developing news, U.S. and Mexican officials con-