Our customers and subscribers ask us every day to predict where prices are headed and lately the answers have seemed to take extra time to explain. It has been more necessary than ever to start any discussion about the price outlook with a clarification about the timeframe, whether it is short-run, intermediate, or long-term. For the grains, my answer about price direction is currently something like "down and then up, and then probably down a little bit again." In the short-term, technical influences are a primary driver for bearish price action in the grain market. Corn and soybean futures found pushback on the chart this week after rebounding up toward tests of their descending channel tops, while wheat slid lower along the bottom end of its downtrend. For the mid-range outlook, seasonal trends paint a friendlier picture of grain price potential leading up to summer. More weather-related risk premium is usually injected into the market at this time of the year when there is such an intense focus on both how crops in South America are going to finish and on how the new U.S. planting season will start. Seasonal price strength could extend further than normal into the…
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