CBOT Corn Outlook on Monday: Up 8-10 cents on technical, outside support

In overnight trading, December corn was up 9 1/4 cents to US$4.12 1/4 and March corn was up 10 1/4 cents to US$4.30 3/4 per bushel.

Relative stability in the equities markets and a climb in crude oil should give support to corn, which has technical strength, analysts said. The corn market has suffered substantial losses in recent weeks due to the turmoil in the financial sector.

"Today we'll see how the outside markets do, and we'll see if corn can start to take on its own identity," said Shawn McCambridge, senior grains analyst with Prudential-Bache.

Given the recent losses, he said corn could recover over the next couple weeks, and "then we'll probably just chop around a bit," McCambridge said.

Harvest pressure could slow upward momentum this week, analysts added. Although good harvest progress is expected in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's crop progress report Monday afternoon, the corn harvest still has a long way to go as many farmers focus on getting their soybeans out of the field, analysts said.

DTN Meteorlogix said there could be some disruption to fieldwork in the U.S. corn belt, especially in the west. The long-range forecast suggests "drier conditions but possibly some fairly cool to cold weather later in the 10 day period."

There are still no technical clues of a market bottom being close at hand, but seasonal studies do show corn prices bottoming out during this timeframe, a technical analyst said.

The next downside price objective is to push and close December prices below solid technical support at last week's low of US$3.71, the technical analyst said. The next upside price objective is to push and close prices above solid technical resistance at last week's high of US$4.28 1/2.

Country Hedging says the market could see a sustained rally in the near-term, but that it needs to rally another 40 cents to fill in a gap on the technical charts dating back to the October U.S. Department of Agriculture crop report.

Speculative funds cut 14,380 contracts from their long positions and 80,080 from their short positions, putting them net long 6,370 contracts, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Monday.