We start of the day with Business Inventories and Retail Sales at 7:30 A.M. followed by Capacity Utilization and Industrial Production at 8:15 A.M. and API Energy Stocks at 3:30 P.M. Yesterdays Crop Progress showed Corn was 5% planted on intended acres versus last week at 2%. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin had optimistic comments as the U.S. China talks continue and the China commerce ministry also had comments that negotiations are in a forward progress. The five-day weather forecast is for more rain, which should further slow progress in plantings as we move closer to the seasonable range of being tardy on planting which will further pressure good-to-excellent bushels per acres. In the overnight electronic session the May Corn is currently trading at 361 ¼, which is 1 ½ of a cent lower. The trading range has been 362 ½ to 361 ¼.
On the Ethanol front there were no trades in the overnight electronic session. The May contract settled at 1.335 and the market is currently showing 2 bids @ 1.324 and 1 offer @ 1.339 with Open Interest dropping to 721 contracts.
On the Crude Oil front the market continues to ride higher even with chatter that OPEC and Russia may raise production. I do not expect that to be the case but the markets can react on headlines. We also have the weekly API Energy Stocks and anticipate draws across the board with Crude stocks down 4 million barrels, Gasoline down 3 million barrels, Distillates down 2 million barrels and refinery runs up 1.0. Genscape also had a bullish spin on the Energy complex and with the shortened week we could see an overreaction. In the overnight electronic session the May Crude Oil is currently trading at 6369, which is 29 points higher. The trading range has been 6379 to 6312.
On the Natural Gas front the May contract is currently trading at 2.590 which is unchanged. The trading range has been 2.594 to 2.583 in quiet trade.
Have a Great Trading Day!