09/08/23 Traders Waiting for the Next WASDE Update

The shortened holiday week produced a mostly very quiet grain trade and it seemed evident that market participants were just marking time until they could see the outcome of next week’s crop report. Speculators were likely only making minor adjustments to their positions and hedgers kept their marketing efforts on hold while preparing for the approaching harvest, so trading volumes were much lighter than normal this week. Take a look at where the different types of traders are positioned heading into the crop report and consider what could change to trigger bigger moves for the market.   The managed money category of traders includes discretionary hedge funds that can choose to be long or short and they can shift positions rather quickly. The two-sided nature of speculators has been on display with a corn position that has flipped from net-long to short and back several times over the last six months. Their indecision came after holding a net-long position in corn for more than two years straight. Now, the funds are net-short corn again by an estimated 87,000 contracts. It should be noted that hedge funds have not turned net-short on soybeans this year, making it nearly three years in…