Morning corn prices are up by a penny to 1 ¾ cents so far heading into the last trading day of the week. The front month futures dropped another 4 to 5 ¾ cents on Thursday, setting a new contract low for the 6th session in a row. The March contract settled 1 ¾ cents off the low after an 11 ¼ cent range. The Mar/Dec spread widened to 47 ¼ cents at the close. The average December corn price in Feb is $4.70 so far for the ’24 insurance price – down from $5.91 last season.
EIA data showed ethanol output increased 1k bpd to 1.084 million barrels per day through the week that ended 2/16. Ethanol stocks were 308k barrels smaller to 25.5 million. The EPA has agreed to permit the sale of E-15 gasoline for the entire year; beginning in 2025. Last year, they had issued a temporary waiver to allow E-15 sales in the summer – one has not been issued yet for this year.
USDA announced an unusually large private export sale for 126k MT of old crop sorghum to China on Thursday morning. Expectations for this morning’s USDA weekly Export Sales report are running between 700k MT and 1.5 MMT for the week that ended 2/15. New crop corn bookings are expected to be below 50k MT.
Mar 24 Corn closed at $4.06, down 5 cents, currently up 1 1/2 cents.
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