Chicago Board of Trade corn futures closed lower on Monday on unwinding of corn/soy spreads as the soybean market attempts to buy acres ahead of the 2012 US seeding season and on positioning before a big US government plantings report at the end of the week. Slow exports of corn also lent pressure as did position-squaring ahead of the release on Friday of USDA's March planting intentions report and quarterly stocks report.
An average of 25 analysts' polled by Reuters pegged this year's US corn planted acreage at 94.720 million (38.3 million hectares), the most in nearly 70 years. A Reuters poll of 17 analysts' pegged the quarterly stocks of corn in the US on March 1 at 6.150 billion bushels, the smallest in five-years and below the year ago total of 6.532 billion.
Large speculators raised their net long position in CBOT corn to the largest in six months during the week ended last Tuesday. The CBOT July/December was at 82-3/4 cents, premium July and the December corn/November soybean ratio was at 2.395. Key support for May at its 50-day moving average of $6.43-1/4 was broken leaving next key support at its 100-day ma of $6.37-3/4. The nine-day RSI was at 39.