Tidbits
USDA announced yesterday morning the sale of 641,000 mts of old crop corn to China. The three-day old crop corn sales to China total is 1.92 million mts (75.6 million bushels).
The corn basis is firming at the river and Great Lake terminals and the May futures corn contract has gained 7¢ on July corn this week and 17¢ since last fall. May will gain another 10 to 20¢ by mid-Arpil now that corn exports are moving. Last year, May corn went 44¢ over July.
So many farmers build bins to capture the return to storage of up to 28¢ to July. The last two years, the market has been inverted, meaning if you stored corn, the market charged you for storage. None-the-less, if your HTA was in the July contract as your corn sat in the bin (or DP), you have made 17 cents on the inversion. If you sold your corn last fall or winter, you could have bought May corn and sell July corn and still captured the 17¢.