Corn and wheat futures traded mixed Thursday, again fading from early highs as the weight of added supply in both markets continues to serve as a headwind to rally attempts.
WHEAT:
May Kansas City wheat futures fell 5 cents on Thursday, closing at $5.17 1/4. Chicago and Minneapolis futures were also moderately lower on Thursday. March KC futures attempted to challenge 100-day moving average ($5.26 1/2) resistance early Thursday, fading as the session wore on but holding above Wednesday’s low at $5.16, which is the immediate support for prices.
Thursday’s export sales report was again lackluster for wheat. Sales for the week ended Jan. 8 were an improvement over recent weeks at 5.7 mb, but that is still a relatively low volume compared to weeks prior to December. Shipments of 11.1 mb were the second lowest (higher than the previous week) since mid-November. Total commitments are 745 mb and 16% ahead of the same point in 2025, but that pace has fallen over the past month and a half, as it was a 23% lead to begin December. This indicates increased world competition may finally be taking a toll on U.S. wheat sales.
U.S. weather remains a risk to U.S. winter wheat crops, with USDA’s most recent map of winter wheat area in drought pointing to 42% of traditional growing regions in some form of drought, that is as of Jan. 6. Precipitation over the past week or two may have reduced that to some extent, but temperatures have remained steadily above average as well. The latter still pointing to freeze damage risks if temperatures should turn suddenly cold in the second half of January.
The DTN National HRW Index finished Wednesday at $4.53, while the DTN National HRS Index was $5.51. Thursday’s futures close and Wednesday’s national average basis of 70 cents under the March board for HRW, and 16 cents under the March board for HRS, would indicate the indices for Thursday afternoon to be near $4.48 and $5.47, respectively.
Corn
March corn futures fell 1 3/4 cents Thursday, closing at $4.20 1/4. May futures were down 2 cents to $4.27 3/4. The corn market again saw an early rally attempt capped at $4.25 on the March board, emerging as the immediate upside resistance. The marginal bounce in prices from Tuesday’s low has occurred on increasingly lower trading volume. $4.17 is seen as the immediate bearish target for March futures.
Thursday morning’s export sales report was solid with a recovery in sales from the previous week’s marketing-year low, to 44.9 million bushels (mb). Shipments for the week ended Jan. 8 were also above the previous four-week average at 61.2 mb. Total commitment pace slipped a point but remains a solid 29% ahead of the same point in early 2025. USDA as of Monday’s WASDE is still anticipating a 12% year-over-year increase in corn exports, leaving room for a future revision higher. On Thursday morning, USDA reported just under 30 mb of flash corn sales to Japan and unknown destinations for the current marketing year, a testament to what should be a strong demand response to this week’s price drop. U.S. corn export prices on an FOB basis are a sizeable discount to other world competitors.
In world corn news, Brazil’s National Supply Company (Conab), held their estimate for 2025-26 corn production in Brazil steady at 138.87 million metric tons (mmt), which would be a yearly decline of 1.5% from what the agency called a record crop of 141 mmt in 2024-25. This has been an area of disagreement between Conab and USDA for some time, with USDA yet to acknowledge last year’s production as a record, and also forecasting 2026 production at 131 mmt, down 3.7% from their 2024-25 forecast.
The DTN National Corn Index finished Wednesday at $3.86. Thursday’s futures close and Wednesday’s national average corn basis of 36 cents under the March board would indicate the index on Thursday afternoon to be near $3.84.
