Corn Soars as Traders Eye USDA Report

Corn futures are on the move ahead of the Friday USDA report, closing Thursday with gains ranging from 5 to 7 cents across the board. The CmdtyView national average Cash Corn price has jumped by 6 cents to $4.87.

The weekly EIA report showed a decrease in ethanol production, down 11,000 barrels per day to 1.099 million barrels per day, but stocks saw an increase of 152,000 barrels to 25.187 million barrels, which is 10.29% above the same week last year.

Traders are looking for net cancellations of 600,000 MT to net sales of 50,000 on old crop corn sales in the last few days of the marketing year, according to the USDA's Export Sales data due out Friday.

A Bloomberg survey of traders predicts that the USDA will cut yield by an average of 2.6 bpa to 178.1 bpa, with production expected to drop 236 million bushels from August to 15.777 billion bushels.