September 23, 2009
CBOT Corn Outlook Wednesday: Weaker start on corrective pullback
Corn futures at the Chicago Board of Trade are called to open 2 to 4 cents lower at the open Wednesday morning, on a corrective pullback from solid price gains seen Tuesday.
In overnight electronic trading, December corn futures were last traded down 3 3/4 cents at US$3.22 a bushel.
"We put some cold weather premium into the market yesterday, and we'll take some of it out today," said Victor Lespinasse, veteran grain market analyst with www.grainanalyst.com. Corn futures rallied Tuesday on some weather forecasters increasing odds for a significant frost event in the U.S. Corn Belt next week. However, Wednesday morning weather models did back off on the frost expectations for next week.
T-storm Weather said Wednesday morning that "a cooler pattern affects most (Corn Belt) areas from Sunday-Tuesday; best frost chances north of crops." Any frost would likely be limited to Canada prairies and the northern U.S. Plains states, said T-Storm Weather.
"Other than the weather talk, there's not much going on in the corn market," said Lespinasse. He did say grain traders will keep an eye on this week's Federal Open Market Committee meeting of the Federal Reserve, and on the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh. The Fed is widely expected to make no changes to monetary policy following the two-day FOMC meeting Wednesday afternoon.
The key "outside markets" are in a mostly neutral posture for corn futures Wednesday morning. Crude oil futures prices and the U.S. dollar index are trading near unchanged price levels, while the U.S. stock indexes were slightly higher.
Technically, the corn bulls' next upside price objective is to push prices above solid technical resistance at last week's high of US$3.47 3/4 a bushel. The next downside price objective for the bears is to push and close prices below major psychological support at US$3.00 a bushel. First resistance for December corn is seen at Tuesday's high of US$3.26 1/4 and then at US$3.30. First support is seen at US$3.20 and then at Tuesday's low of US$3.15 1/4.
