I try to live a somewhat active lifestyle. That is easier during the summer months.

In North Dakota, it gets cold in the winter and the sun sets around 5 p.m. Throw in televised basketball and football games, and it is easy to sit on the couch from September to March. With that sitting around, my scale doesn’t quite work right (at least that is what I tell myself). Discipline is required for me to stay active and keep feeling good throughout the winter.

Last fall and winter also tested my discipline in grain marketing.

You have likely heard from several brokers and consultants to have working orders to make scale-up sales into market rallies. The problem is those marketing methods have not worked since October. We saw very few meaningful rallies after Oct. 20 until the recent move higher following option expiration on March options.

Not only was a rally difficult to come by, so were the overnight rallies followed by mid-morning selloffs. Those overnight rallies are where a lot of resting offers get filled. A lack of overnight liquidity coupled with the momentum trading of AI machines can – and often – lead to highs coming in higher than they maybe should, as well as lows going lower than they should.

This brings me back to discipline.

It was easy to forget about resting offers on scale-up orders over the last six months, as it felt like those orders never filled, or those orders were void as the contracts that they were against went off the board.

Related:Capitalize on a seasonal corn price rally

Catch those short rallies

The market dynamics have changed, however, over the last three months. From October on, the market was focused on increased ending stocks and lower prices as managed money funds built a large short position in corn. As the unwind of those short positions has developed, December 2024 corn has rallied from a low of $4.46 on Feb. 26 to the recent high of $4.96 ¾ on May 15. That high occurred in the first five minutes of the morning trade after the coffee break (8:30 – 8:35 a.m. Central). One hour later at 9:30 a.m. Central, the corn market had sold off 8 cents and was trading below $4.90. If you had orders working at $4.96 ½, you would have made a sale. If you waited to see that price hit, and then called your broker, or merchandiser, or waited for them to call you, it would have been too late to hit the target.

We seem to be past the winter doldrums of heavy selling weighing on the market. Don’t infer from that comment that we are going to shoot higher. Uncertainty will step in as the market driver.

Some questions:

I don’t have an answer to any of those questions.

What I do know is that uncertainty is alive and well. Uncertainty creates price swings that allow producers to get hedges on simply by having orders working above the market. It sure feels like it is time to get those orders working again if you haven’t already.

And it turns out my scale wasn’t broken. Time to get active again.

Please feel free to reach out to me at 701-987-6009 or anyone on the AgMarket.Net team at 844-4AG-MRKT. We’d love to hear from you.

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