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Market analyst: corn market harvest lows likely in

A market analyst says he thinks the corn market has hit harvest lows and it might not be a bad time to market new crop corn.

Tim Marsh with Summit Commodities says the weekly charts hit lows around $3.60 in the September contract before it expired and higher corn prices hit on October 2.

“We might have already made the highs, but I don’t think the market is ready to roll over until we see what the USDA has to say about the crop size in the October 11 crop report, which will be out next Friday.”

He says the grain markets have a way of repeating themselves in similar situations and from 2015 to 2020 there was a similar corn and soybean carryover to usage ratio.

“Each of those years except one, 2017, we didn’t get a corn rally in the fall. We pretty much sunk deeper throughout the fall,” he says. “But the other four years we had rallies that bottomed in the late summer, like this year, and then, we had modest rallies as much as $.50 and they topped in October.”

Marsh says the corn market has rallied $.49 cents so far and this could be a selling opportunity.

“If you need cash, this could be your rally to sell corn on and even if you don’t need the money and you want to get a portion of your crop sold, I’d recommend you sell it in the July contract. If it’s corn you don’t have to sell, you might be able to store it until late April or May when the best basis of the year should occur.”

While these corn prices aren’t likely profitable for farmers, he says these prices allow U.S. corn to remain competitive in the global marketplace.