In the overnight session the grains traded slightly higher with March corn up 1 cent, March soybeans up ½ of a cent and March wheat unchanged. Argentina is still expected to receive rain today and tomorrow which is expected to start in the south and move northward. Follow-up precipitation is in the forecast between January 20-25th.
Exporters sell 320,000 metric tons of corn for delivery to unknown destinations during the 2017/2018 marketing year. -USDA
Today is a very important day for price direction with the USDA releasing the January WASDE report, the Quarterly Grain Stocks and the Winter Wheat Seedings report. Below are the analyst expectations.
Winter wheat seedings is expected to show that farmers only planted 31.307 million acres, down from 32.696 million acres in 2017. The range of analyst estimates goes from 30.100 million acres to 32.0 million acres. The smallest ever winter wheat planted area was in 1909 when only 29.196 million acres was seeded.
Expectations are for ending stocks to be revised higher for soybeans and lower for corn and wheat. The average analyst guess for soybean ending stocks 472 million bushels which is an increase from 445 million bushels in the December report. The revision higher is anticipated due to the slower than needed pace of soybean exports this year. Corn ending stocks are expected to decline slightly to 2.431 billion bushels compared to 2.437 billion bushels in the December report. Wheat ending stocks are expected to decline slightly to 959 million bushels from 960 million in December.
Analysts are expecting that the USDA will increase the 2017-2018 soybean production estimates in Brazil to 110.27 million metric tons from December's estimate of 108 million metric tons. Argentina production will most likely be revised smaller due to the dry conditions which have delayed planting. Analyst expect Argentina corn production to slip to 39.9 million metric tons from 41.5 million in December and soybean production to slip to 52 million metric tons compared to 54.5 million metric tons in Dec. If realized that would be the smallest soybean crop out of Argentina in five years.
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