Grain Comments: 10.20.25

Good morning. Monday trade in Chicago has started mostly in the green as we get into the new week, with the soy complex seeing a further extension of last week’s rally on more weekend China optimism, while the grain markets are higher also but are clear followers in the space at least to start the day. Weekend rains across the central and eastern parts of the Corn Belt were slightly better than expected and have led to really the first wide-spread harvest slow down of the season, which coupled with news of more China meetings scheduled for this week, has produced the pop in the futures space this morning. Otherwise, we seem to be no closer to a re-opening of the federal government than we were three days ago, which means its likely to be another choppy week of trading on headlines and rumors that struggle to find confirmation. Corn futures to kick-off Monday are around a penny higher, soybean futures are 7-8 cents higher, and the Chicago wheat market is trading either side of unchanged. Products are mixed, soybean meal is up $3-4/ton and soybean oil is down 5-10 points. Outside markets are also mixed, crude oil futures are down 30-40 cents/bbl, the Dow Jones index is up 80 points, and the US$ index is up 15 points; the S&P500 is up 20 points and the NASDAQ is up 100 points. Gold futures are higher but are seeing an inside day of trading so far after Friday’s reversal lower.

Today’s Reports: Weekly Export Inspections; there will be no Weekly Crop Progress report today

• Soybean futures are seeing a fresh round of buying this morning coming out of the weekend following comments from President Trump to reporters that he thought a deal could be reached with China on soybeans. Trump added that he wanted to see purchases that were at least at previous levels, but didn’t go into further detail as to what such a deal could possibly look like.

• There were also headlines on the China trade front this morning that Beijing’s top trade negotiator, Li Chenggang, had been removed from his position as permanent representative to the WTO, though the post gave no further detail on the situation.

• The other big trade-related headline from over the weekend was beef-related, and comes following comments from President Trump last week that his administration had reached a deal that would lower beef prices to US consumers. There are rumors now circulating that this deal he mentioned could possibly be a purchase agreement with Argentina, which has some concerned that the administration is going to basically trade US dollars for Argentine beef. Again, details of the development were limited.

Though there continues to be no managed money updates from the CFTC, traders estimate that the funds were buyers of 25,500 contracts of corn in the last week, as well as 6,500 contracts of soybeans, 4,500 contracts of Chicago wheat, 7,000 contracts of soybean meal, and 8,000 contracts of soybean oil. We have updated position estimates at the bottom of this report, but would again caution that they likely have a low degree of accuracy as we’ve now gone three weeks without an actual update