Grain futures were under pressure early in the session but were able to rebound and finish the day in positive territory. Is the low in, or was today just the start of a near term recovery rally?
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“Oliver Sloup, He’s with Blue Line Futures. What’s anything jump off the page when you look at these prices? for the grain markets. I think when we saw weakness early on in this morning’s trade, it could have been on the back of some margin department saying, hey, listen, you’ve been long, you know, all week and the price keeps going against you, you’re running out of margin. Okay, you got to exit. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of this morning’s weakness be some margin call pressure, but potentially that leads to a little bit of capitulation and some short covering rallies here to round out the week. It’s still going to be really important, though, to really get out above some technical barriers because the fundamentals just they really don’t seem to be there right now. But for the technical standpoint for corn, 450 to 455 is the hurdle that the bulls want to get out above. If they can do that, potentially that sparks a little bit more momentum here in the next week’s trade. But until then, the bears have absolute control over the chart. And on the soybean side, 1230 to 1235 still a ways away from where we’re trading right now. But that was the breakdown point from Friday’s WASDE report. That’s going to be the big, I think, inflection point for the market if we can get back up there is if the bulls are able to chew through that or if we just mark another lower high. Bet some analysts come on real quick and say they think that if the market does rally, it’s going to be met with some selling as the farmers undersold. Do you think there’s a lot for sale out there if we do see a decent rally? Well, farmers have been undersold, and that’s something that we’ve been kind of worried about for some time now. I’ve always told guys, you’re not willing to sell at higher prices. I know one thing that makes farmers sell, and that is unfortunately lower prices, especially when bills come due. And market makers and managed money seem to be well aware of that as they’ve just been adding to their short position relentlessly for some time now. And a lot of people talking about the big net short position from managed money. I would remind you, 2019 funds were sellers from the start of the year all the way through April. They amassed a net short position of about 330,000 contracts. That’s about 100,000 more contracts short than they are right now. That could potentially lead to a 50 cent drop if fundamentals don’t change here in the near term. Great information. Thank you for that very much. Stay right there. We’re going to go away. We’re going to pay some bills. We’re going to come back and talk more with Oliver Sloat, Blue Line Futures in Chicago after this. Going to meet Oliver Sloat, Blue Line Futures. Oliver, thanks. We’ve got about 90 seconds. What do you think about these livestock prices? Well, I tell you what, the cattle complex has been really resilient and friendly this week. I was in the camp that we’d probably start to see some consolidation in the April live cattle contract between 170, 175. But breaking out above that today and really just kind of adding some fuel to the fire here into the close, trading back to the highest point since November 24th, which was a breakdown point. I think that’s pretty encouraging, but I think this could also be just some short covering, maybe some people jumping in ahead of tomorrow’s cattle on feed report, which could have bigger implications for the market when we come back next week. So it’ll be interesting to see if this momentum continues or if this is just a full retracement of a breakdown point back in November. And on the hog side of things, I think that’s probably going to remain range bound until we get some new news. Looking at the February contract, 70 on the low end of the range, 73 on the upper end. Look for some consolidation. Forgetting about the report, how much does a healthy consumer have to do with some of these cattle prices? It absolutely has a ton to do with it. And obviously a lot of attention has been on economic data and potentially slowing economic data, not just here but abroad as well. We’ve seen some data out from China earlier this week that certainly raised some big caution flags. So it’s nice to see cattle recover. It’s still a ways away from those contract highs, and I’m not sure that those are going to be attainable again. So for people looking to manage risk, I’d say this is an opportunity. 100 percent. All right. Appreciate you coming on. Great stuff. Great content, as usual. Oliver Sloat, Blue Line Futures in Chicago. We’ll bring it back here to Suzanne. One last time. One last time. Cowguy Close, of course, coming up at the top of the hour. Thank you, Scott. Well, Social Security beneficiaries are only getting a 3.2 percent…”
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