This is the SFN Market Report with Brooks Schaffer of Palmetto Grain. Reach him at [email protected] or 843-540-4540.

Thanksgiving week brings thin volume, and market moves can sometimes be exaggerated in either direction. Most years, the majority of the week trades like watching paint dry and is punctuated with a few hours of wild moves based on some headline or rumor. That was indeed the pattern this year as well. Most of last week traded very flat on low volume, but there was a sharp rally on Wednesday late morning. There were rumors about Chinese purchases of 10 to 15 cargoes of soybeans, which had soybeans jump higher and pull corn with it. By the end of the session, beans had given back some of their gains and closed off the highs. Corn had a stronger close without much new news in the corn market, but such is the magic of a holiday week. There were no more fireworks in the abbreviated session on Friday, and the market traded flat on very low volume, as many traders did not even bother coming in.

Since the rumors on Wednesday, we have not seen confirmation from USDA on the purchases, so soybeans drifted lower on Monday. Soybeans are going to live and die on the pace of purchases by China. Not much else matters right now. China rejected a couple of cargoes of Brazilian soybeans for contamination by treated wheat seed and was banning cargoes from certain exporters, but even that did not help the market much since we have not seen additional sales yet. If we see confirmation of more big sales, the market will react. If we are going to get to 12 million metric tons sold by the end of the calendar year, we need to see sales every day or almost every day. The last flashed sale was on Friday for 300,000 metric tons. We need to see some more progress this week. Brazilian weather has not made many headlines, which is not good for the bulls. Planting is moving along at a fairly normal pace, and there are no major weather threats.

Corn managed a decent rally on Wednesday, trading through some technical levels, but was not able to get much follow-through this week so far. December is typically a good month for corn. We rallied 25 cents last December in corn. The market is going to run into farmer selling on any additional strength.

We get the next USDA update on Tuesday, Dec. 9, at noon. Historically, USDA does not make many changes in the December report, but they did last year, and after the extended government shutdown threw so many things into flux, I would not be surprised to see more changes than what we have seen in the past. Markets are going to keep watching China and seeing if there are any threats developing in South American weather.