November 14 Grains Commentary: Virginia McGathey

- Virginia McGathey: Today, soybeans rise. They still say in that consolidated state. The export inspections hit the mark again, and that really gave the market a little bit of a boost. It gives futures a lift, and it actually offsets some of the losses that soybeans have had over the past couple of sessions. But it still stays in that channel, and that channel is between like 8.75 and 8.91 for the January contract. Well, we're still just maneuvering around at this point, waiting to get something to get some direction. The US-China trade war, who knows when that's going to come up. We're still watching out of the side of our eyes on exactly what's going to be coming up, and all the other issues are at hand, too. What are the final yield numbers going to be? But as of today, there just wasn't much happening. And kind of a relatively quiet day for all of the commodities. Corn was steady. The technical numbers were offing a little bit of support, so technical traders were stepping in and buying that 50-day moving average. And it's kind of holding, that's become the big support level right now. And futures have been kind of circling around this same area since really mid-September. So we are still looking for some kind of direction, and that's not going to come until the two main things that we have, because we still have some decent demand. US-China trade talks, are we going to get something rolling on that? And what are the total numbers for the yield coming in? We've been watching so many different things happening in the stock market, in what's happening in California, that we have kind of lost track of exactly where we are in the commodities. And so it seems that that has stabilized the markets a little bit and kind of moving sideways, not sure which way to turn. Wheat fell today. The planting progress for that winter wheat is about 90% complete. Right on target from last year. So now that we've caught up, that put a little bit of pressure on the market. The trend has been lower really all along, but with the market being so thin, it creates big bounces. And that's how we had that run-up to 5.20 on that December contract. The hard red wheat stocks are the largest on the calendar, and that's still creating a very volatile market right now. But that means that there's plenty of trade opportunities on the wheat contract, especially. But today being quiet as it was, the wheat was off a little bit. It tried to rally back right there at the close, but it still closed down a little bit. But one thing to remember, that it's above that $5 benchmark. So that still is the big support level for that wheat contract.