To hear Brandon’s recap of the day’s trade with Market Analyst Alan Brugler, click here.
OMAHA, Neb. – Planting intentions and grain stocks will become a bigger factor in the corn trade when the calendar turns over in March, and soybeans continue to enjoy the run-up that they’ve seen in the last few days. Today’s analyst is Alan Brugler, president of Brugler Marketing and Management.
Corn
Corn’s pretty flat right at the moment. We’ve had a pretty good run up since back in January; the market’s kind of digesting that. There’s a seasonal tendency for it to go down the last two weeks of February, and we’re seeing just a little of that influence. You’re getting a litte profit-taking in the month-end by some of the big funds. We’ll start talking about the planting intentions report and the grain stocks report in March, and start trading those a little more after the calendar turns.
Soybeans
We’ve had a pretty good run-up here the last few days. there’s been some flooding in Brazil that’s delaying or even damaging some of the harvesting there in Mato Grosso, which is the biggest production state. It’s also the state that’s the furthest done with harvest, but there’s a lot of it still standing.
Soybean meal has supported that; it’s rallied up to $465 bucks a ton , which gives the crushers some money to play with as well.
Cattle
We’re up pretty sharply today. You’ve got February cattle trading at $146/cwt, and of course they expire on Friday, so this is a very thin market, but they’re basically anticipating a little higher cash trade this week; we had $145/cwt last week. Boxed beef prices were up pretty strong on Monday, and got people thinking maybe we’re getting the consumer to pay a little bit more, and maybe we can push this thing a little higher.
Hogs
Hogs set new life-of-contract highs almost up and down the board here, and that’s because basically we have lost at least 4 million head of hogs to the PED virus. What had looked like an expansion this spring, is turning out to be a little smaller numbers, and when you have tight beef supplies as well, that just gives you a pretty good push on the hog prices.
