Corn futures have gotten hit hard as funds press their net short position to near record levels. Is there any hope for a rally left?
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Oliver Sloup coming to us live from Chicago Blue Line futures. How you doin, Oliver? I’m doing well, it was a tough end to last week’s trade. But it seems like we’ve gotten a little bit of a mixed bag to start a new month and a new quarter of trade, which is a little bit better than how we finished last week. But still plenty of time left this week. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the volume 10 out here after the first couple of days as we head into the July 4 holiday but all in all, I think traders are still kind of digesting last week’s report and keeping a very close eye on the weather. Obviously the corn market really took it on the chin drown out last week’s trade and you know, we all kind of re learn what we already knew is that the American farmer loves to plant corn, right?
That’s a really tough hurdle to get over when you have a surprise like that on the acreage number. But now looking at the fund positioning, I think it’s really interesting Friday’s come in, no trader support had a net short about 278,000 contracts. Keep in mind that just through June 25. That doesn’t really include the back half of last week’s trade. I think if you add in the pressure that we saw on the back half of last week’s trade, we’re probably pretty darn close to a record net short position if not overtaking that. So, you know, there’s a lot of bearish headlines out there. But a lot of that is known at this point with these reports behind us and with funds as short as they are. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some intermittent short covering rallies for bison strike to the market. Oliver I like your ideas when everyone’s bearish. Maybe we should go the other way. Alright, you stay right there. That’s Oliver Sloup with blue line futures.
Market. We are in the first July. And that money swooshing around what do you say my friend? Yeah, well, the cattle market it looks like we’re gonna have a breakout midweek last week and just weren’t able to get any follow through. You know, the seasonal strength has been a nice tailwind through June. But as we get into July, that starts to dwindle a little bit. And I think last week’s price action is a little bit of a caution flag especially for the feeder cattle market. I mean, with corn off as much as it was you would have thought that that would be enough to really get feeders trading back towards the top and in the range if not breaking out above it along with all the other bullish fundamental tailwind and the fact that we weren’t able to do that is again, a little sign for pause here in the near term, the outside markets get kind of choppy here to start the new month of trade. One thing that really caught my eye here to start the new month trade is the bonds just getting whacked again, they got hit hard on Friday, and again, following through to the downside today, which means interest rates are rising. And if that starts to become more of a trend here through through July, I wouldn’t be surprised he that puts some pressure on the stock market and the indices, and potentially some of that money flow sloshing around like he had mentioned. Now put some pressure on the cattle complex. Absolutely Oliver, you know, it’s never been more expensive to produce a pound of beef. And we have to keep an eye on it. I’m old. I started in the corn room. And then I went over to the bond room. And so I’ve spent a lot of my time trading bonds we had that last 15 years where interest rates didn’t move. Not only didn’t they move, they went up. They’ve stayed up for a while and everyone’s saying they’re going to come down not so fast. You look at a corn board that’s went down as hard as it did in an interest rate that’s three times higher than the producers used to pain. It’s definitely putting pressure on the producer, correct? Yeah, absolutely. And as you had mentioned, a lot of people are expecting it to come down but I’ve been hearing that all year interest rate cuts are around the corner around the corner, but they keep getting pushed back and pushed back so it’d be interesting to see how how it unfolds especially into an election season. So I guess I’ll leave you with the wise words of buckle up and keep your hard hat on. Oliver I missed your pretty face. Maybe next time we’ll see you here in person