Corn: May corn rose 4 cents to $4.57 1/4, closing above the 200-day moving average. Corn futures spent the morning under pressure ahead of USDA’s Prospective Plantings and quarterly Grain Stocks Reports, which featured some not-so-bullish surprises for corn, but futures rallied following their release.
Soybeans: May soybeans sunk 8 1/4 cents to $10.14 3/4 and settled near session lows. May meal fell 80 cents to $292.7, near session lows. May bean oil fell 27 points to 44.89 cents. Soybeans saw relative strength going into today’s reports but quickly reversed lower, negating all of Friday’s gains.
Wheat: May SRW wheat rose 8 3/4 cents to $5.37, nearer the session high on short covering after hitting a contract low last Friday. May HRW wheat gained 5 1/4 cents to $5.57, nearer the daily high. Key USDA data today leaned price-friendly for wheat futures, showing all U.S. wheat planted area for 2025 is estimated at 45.4 million acres, down 2 percent from 2024 and would be the second-lowest all wheat planted area since records began in 1919.
Cotton: May cotton fell 7 points to 66.83 cents but marked a high-range close. Cotton futures gapped lower overnight. Buyers failed to surface after USDA’s Prospective Planting Report near midday, which featured an estimate of 9.867 million cotton acres.
Cattle: June live cattle fell $1.20 to $203.65 and near mid-range. May feeder cattle fell 67 1/2 cents to $284.50, nearer the daily high. The cattle futures markets saw some profit-taking pressure today amid a general “risk-off” trader and investor mentality in the general marketplace.
Hogs: Hog futures rebounded from early losses, with the nearby April contract ending the day having rallied $1.025 to $87.725. Most-active June settled 50 cents lower at $95.275. Hog futures continued struggling despite last week’s bullishly construed USDA Hogs & Pigs report, since almost all the numbers published in the report fell short of expectations.