Latest / Professional Ag Marketing Podcast / Corn Drifts From Crude Oil | Grain Market Talk April 2nd, 2026

Transcript

Corn Drifts From Crude Oil | Grain Market Talk April 2nd, 2026 · Professional Ag Marketing Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: You're locked in to the Green Market Talk Podcast.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Fast updates, market movers, and the green news you need right now.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Trading commodity futures and options involve substantial risk of loss.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: I've got Jaden here with us today.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to talk about the grain markets.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of fun things to talk about, but I just got wrapped up in the cattle podcast, Jaden, and it is a happy one-year anniversary of Liberation Day.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: How are we feeling a one year into Trump's tariffs?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're still seeing volatile markets today like we did a year ago.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, a little bit different situation, but we're still dealing with those things.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about this short week we've had in the grain market.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: We've got a ton of fun things to talk about this week.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: Monday, let's just start with little chart action.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Cade, pull up the December corn chart.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about what we've seen here to start off our week here.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Monday, at what we saw, we were a little bit weaker for a little while.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Going into a report that showed us, hey, we're probably gonna have some profit taking ahead of the quarterly stocks report, just a little risk off, um, a little bit of volatility through the weekend, but not too bad, I felt like Jaden.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: And then all of a sudden, Tuesday came pretty quick.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: We saw a quarterly stocks and acreage report that showed us some interesting things, I'd say, but it was highly anticipated.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: What did you get from that report?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Mike, so the 95 million acre corn number wasn't the most maybe bullish corn number we could have seen.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, you have to keep in mind that this survey was done for this report, you know, beginning of March, end of Feb, so that the war hasn't really taken off by then.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe the whole fertilizer situation wasn't really factored in, but nonetheless, yeah, 95.3 on corn and 84.7 on beans.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um on the but talking about the stocks report, um, I I thought that was kind of interesting, just ran some numbers there.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, as we know, there's a lot of corn sitting around here, and and just just a fact from this report.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, as of March 1st, corn stocks in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota, um, we are over 313 million bushels more versus last year, and that's equivalent to about 711 shuttle trains, just to put that in perspective.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: So, extra.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, that's a lot of corn to chew through.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and we're we're realizing that in the basis market, I feel like it's been no job at all to find corn in the Western Corn Belt here, Jaden, so far this year.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: So the quarterly stocks and acreage report, I was really excited going into Tuesday.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: We finally got to go see some fundamental trade, and then by the end of the day, we still didn't really trade quarterly stocks or acreage numbers.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: It felt like the number was great.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: I thought 95.3 was a fantastic number on corn because it was it was probably 96, I thought, prior to this report.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then since the Iran conflict started, I thought it could have been a little lower.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if it was a little bit lower than that, like 94, it then one has to really argue like, can this number go up?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Did they include some of the Iran into it?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: This way it shows that they moved it a little bit, but that's probably the biggest number you're gonna see out of acres going forward the rest of the year.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: The the market I was surprised by because it felt a lot stronger after that report came out.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I was a little surprised by that.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: Quarterly stocks were a little bit low.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that was friendly on the corn, but I thought they would have had a more bearish reaction to that acreage.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: I would argue anything over 95 is probably a little bit bearish from these price levels on the corn market and a little bit bearish on just the balance sheet in general.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: You get under 95, it creates a lot more flexibility on that balance sheet that we could flex ourselves into a tighter position, especially with some strong demand in that corn market.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: But honestly, by the end of the day, we didn't even keep trading that report.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: I bet we traded that report like for what, 20 minutes, an hour maybe.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh one of the headlines you'll see next that Cada pull up was immediately after that.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: We started getting massive headlines out of the Iran conflict talking about, you know, Iran ready to end the war if security is guaranteed.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they wanted guarantees to really say that to end the war.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um they continued on some ceasefire talks.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: I just felt like a lot of headlines came out kind of that Tuesday and Tuesday night, kind of Wednesday morning on the Iran conflict.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: And it really moved the market around, didn't it, Jaden?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right, Mike.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think another thing to keep in mind is before the stocks report and acreage report, we also did take about 10 to 15 cents off the corn market prior to the report.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh seems like some funds were taking some profits heading into the report with such a long, long position in that market.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: Great, great point there.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: And then let's move kind of through some of those headlines.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: Wednesday night.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: Last night, Trump gave a speech about eight central time.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I know you and I were talking around that time frame after it came out.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, what was your take?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like uh you from the words that it sounded like you were thinking last night was it was fine until like the last 10 seconds.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: So Trump, you know, he just blabbling on, basically patting himself on the back on how great he was, and then right at the end went when he said, Yep, so no deal has been reached, and we're gonna keep bombing them for the next two to three weeks.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: And once I heard that, I'm like, well, equities are going down and crude's going up, and that's exactly what we saw today.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh, in a pretty big way, too.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: Equities ended up spending most of the night down about 100 points on the SP.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: Crude oil ended most of the day up$11 on the or uh up eleven dollars on the front month crude there.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: So some very big headlines that we continue to trade in this Iran conflict.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: We're not out of the weeds yet.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's not over with, but there are a few interesting takeaways, I really think, from this market.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: And what I wanted to focus on was today's trade and a lot of this week's trade, I felt like corn diverged itself from the crude oil market.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: We saw lower trade in the corn and we saw higher trade in the crude oil.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: I thought that was interesting.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: I thought that crude and the S P 500 almost traded more together today than crude oil.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um with that being the case, I think there is something worth talking about.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: When I talk about crude oil and the price of crude oil being high relative to corn price, I think part of this is being misunderstood.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: If I look at December corn today, I should be comparing that to December crude oil, which has very good volume.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of the second highest volume month for crude crude oil, for example.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: I would argue that today crude oil in the December month is only$71-ish.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: That it actually isn't that high relative to corn price historically.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: It it's still high, but it's not crazy like we like we've been talking about, where the front month, for example, is$111.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: So what what's your take on crude oil one?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Crude oil spreads, crude oil spreads to corn.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think out of this market?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right, Mike.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: So just looking at the crude oil spreads chart we got up there.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so like May was up 11 bucks today, and Dees was only up 20 when we took that screenshot.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that's telling me the trade really does believe Trump, and he thinks the trade thinks we're gonna be out of there in two to three weeks.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you're seeing that in the stock market today as we look here.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: The SP is actually green on the day after being down 100 earlier.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I think investors have just eased their, you know, tensions have eased over over Trump, what he said last night, and I think right now they're trading that this thing's gonna be done in two to three weeks.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: Now, if you don't think it's gonna be done in two to three weeks, and you do think that there is significant damage to infrastructure, and that this is a long drawn-out game, that Crudo is gonna have a hard time going below$80.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: Right now, I mean, December being at$71, the the market's saying, uh, you know, we'll get there when we get there, Jaden.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: Basically at this point.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: So I find that very, very interesting just based upon how long the markets think this thing's gonna last.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: Because sure, we may think it's gonna last for a while and have massive implications down the road, but that's only about a ten dollar increase from the start of the war for those winter months.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that's something a focus point of mine here at the end of the week.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right, Mike.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the like you said, the the December contract definitely doesn't have a lot of war premium built into it before the war.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: We were trading in that$60 level.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Not so much.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you for joining us today, Jaden.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Remember, everybody, thanks for tuning in today.
• 8:51
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• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: Also, check out our website at professional agmarketing.com.