Market Advisor John Heinberg from Total Farm Marketing joins Farm Director Pam Jahnke to talk strategy in the harvest marketplace. He says no news and slow exports haven’t been favorable for commodity prices.
Wet weather has stalled out the harvest, not just in Wisconsin but across the northern Corn Belt. That complicates an already slow news influence in the market. Heinberg, out of West Bend, says the market is looking for fresh news. Without it, prices can stall or tumble. It’s happening enough that he says he’s a little worried for corn growers.
“The markets have really gotten quiet — it’s just lack of news right now,” he explains. “We have just been sitting here at the bottom of this last little sell-off point which makes me nervous because if we don’t start seeing some news, eventually the market gets even more bored, and then we can break down.”
Even though there hasn’t been a lot of big news in commodities this week, soybeans still have a story to tell. Heinberg thinks there may be some upward potential price-wise out there.
“We’ve had a nice rally at least off the lows,” he says. “But last week ADM’s CEO came out and basically said that Argentina was going to be out of the ability to crush beans this month, and we’ve seen the soybean meal market just really take off… that’s really kind of fueled this soybean rally.”
If the U.S. is going to see any export activity increase, now is the time for soybean sales, Heinberg says. He explains there’s a definite pattern to how international business flows. For the U.S. right now, it’s slow.
“When we get to about the first of January, that’s when that soybean business falls apart. But then the corn market is supposed to kick in again in that January, February, March window,” he says. “So right now, for corn, we need to see sales get on the books.”
