Marty Hibbs is a grain merchandiser with Grain Farmers of Ontario. Hibbs is a 25 year veteran futures trader, analyst, and portfolio manager. He was a regular guest analyst on BNN for four years and is currently authoring the Market Side education series on futures trading basics in the Ontario Grain Farmer magazine.
Grain Market Commentary for August 16, 2017
| Commodity | Period | Price | Weekly Movement |
| Corn CBOT | September | 3.52 | 20 cents |
| Soybeans CBOT | November | 9.25 | 53 cents |
| Wheat CBOT | September | 4.20 | 44 cents |
| Wheat Minn. | September | 6.73 | 60 cents |
| Wheat Kansas | September | 4.20 | 24 cents |
| Chicago Oats | September | 2.60 | 10 cents |
| Canadian $ | September | 0.7898 | 0.15 points |
Corn
Corn moved lower again to test the all-important $3.50 support area that we have spoken about for the last three weeks. As of this writing, we are trading at $3.50. Since we have dropped vertical to this support level, I feel we should get some sort of reprieve in the form of a bounce in prices over the next week. This of course does not have to follow my thinking but we seem to be taking a breather. If we continue lower and close below the $3.50 level there is a very good chance that we will be visiting the 2016 lows of last fall.
Initial support on the September futures is seen here at $3.50, while overhead resistance is still at $4, also on the September contract. Short term indicators are neutral and the primary trend is still down.
Soybeans
Soybeans are pushing on the support level once again and if we finally break through with a close below the important $9 level on November we could be in for another 50 cents worth of downside as we have mentioned so many times in the past six months.
Soybeans, unlike wheat, did not really participate in the July rally but instead offered just an opportunity to sell some of your crop. Our red sell signal from August 3 has dealt us a 50 cent per bushel drop in the past two weeks. All of the grains are currently sitting at their respective support levels as of this writing and it will be interesting to see how next week plays out.
Initial support is at $9 with overhead resistance at $9.75 – $10 on the November contract.
Short term indicators are negative and the primary trend is still down.
Wheat
Our June 1 rally in wheat gave us some hope for a bright future with prices surging into the first week of July. Then came the reversal. But not just a normal reversal, rather a trend reversal drop that wiped out the entire rally and posted new lows from the June 1 date – all within a six-week period. We had a support line at the $4.20 level on the September contract and we closed August 16 at $4.19 ¼ . This move has rattled our markets but it has lead me to believe that there still may be a chance that a breath of life in the trend changing move may still exist since the bear market has been neutralized if not reversed. That being said, we could see the market slowly regain some strength in the coming months. For the time being we need to view any rallies in the coming weeks as selling opportunities. Support lines cut across the $4.16 level on the September chart while the bullish indicator we received back in January is actually still intact on the weekly chart.
Harvest 2017 prices as of the close, August 16 are as follows:
SWW @ $182.43/MT ($4.96/bu), HRW @ $189.46/MT ($5.16/bu),
HRS @ $254.49/MT ($6.93/bu), SRW @ $187.11/MT ($5.09/bu).
