What’s Up, What’s Down: Mixed for Grain Futures
Comments for Friday, August 21, 2009
Looking Ahead to Today By Reflecting Back at Thursday’s Price Action
GRAINS:
Higher close on Thursday for Minneapolis, Kansas City and Chicago wheat along with soymeal and rough rice while lower for oats, corn and soyoil. All of the wheat continue to look overall with no changes off of today’s higher closes. Corn settled lower with good resistance and should stay basically between 3.00 and 3.50 for the rest of the year. Oats closed slightly lower but has strong resistance between 220 and 235 basis the December contract while consolidating since the middle of July. Rice made a new recent low but rallied to settle slightly higher with major support from 130 down to 120 basis the September contract. Beans and oil settled lower while meal closed slightly higher but no changes technically again. Beans have support under 930 basis the November contract while meal is in a support area at this time and oil’s (Dec.) support is around 3600. For me the bean complex is a tough call but all can be bought at their support areas for now. Sell Signals for Rice, Oats and Minneapolis Wheat.
MEATS:
Reports Today: Cattle On Feed, Cold Storage. Higher closes yesterday for live cattle and lean hogs, unchanged for pork bellies while unchanged to lower for the feeder cattle. The trend is still down for the cattle and feeders but the action of the last three trading sessions gives some hope for the bulls because it may now be at the beginning of a turn around or at least a retracement. Although hogs are still in a downtrend overall they are still showing some bottoming signs holding up over the last week and a half. Bellies closed unchanged but still look lower overall. Sell Signals for Cattle, Feeders and Hogs.
See the balance of my morning comments, including the Metals, Softs, Energies and Grains, at my website. For my complete coverage, visit my commentary page at www.markethead.com.
Rick Alexander has been a broker and analyst in the futures business for over thirty years. He is a Vice-President for Sales and Trading at the Zaner Group (www.zaner.com) a Chicago-based futures brokerage firm. If you would like a free booklet explaining the charts mentioned above, email Rick at ralexander@zaner.com.