Commodity Markets

Investors Debate Corn’ s Value Signal

My usual modus operandi, also known as a method of operation, or simply“ MO”, when putting these pieces together for my friends at Farmers Hot Line, I go back and look at what I wrote the previous year.

And sometimes, like this month, I find I could just copy and paste from one year to the next, as it fits with what I was thinking for the new piece. Either I’ m caught in a cycle, the markets are or possibly a little bit of both.

Watson Shifts Shape Market Positioning

This month, I was going to talk about King Corn’ s seasonality, looking at the possibility of the market being a buying opportunity. Then I pulled up my piece for October 2024 titled,“ Is Corn a Good Buy, or a Goodbye?” The conclusion was the jury was still undecided, depending on what Watson( the algorithm driven investment industry) decided to do over the coming months.

As it turned out, the corn market did rally with the National Corn Index( NCI, national average cash price) moving from a September 2024 settlement near $ 3.93 to a high monthly close in January 2025 near $ 4.50.

This move was driven in part by noncommercial buying with weekly Commodity Futures Trading Commission Commitments of Traders reports showing a switch from a net-short futures position( more short or sold contracts than long or bought contracts) of 266,000 contracts to a net-long( more long contracts than short contracts) of 468,000 contracts in mid- February 2025.

From there, though, Watson started selling, again switching to a net-short futures position of as much as 156,000 contracts as of July 1, 2025. This brought the NCI back to a low monthly close near $ 3.7850, within sight of the August 2024 settlement of $ 3.6850.

Indeed, the market does look to be in a cycle.

Funds Trim Shorts, Add to Longs

By early September, the noncommercial net-short futures position had been trimmed to 52,500 contracts, the smallest net-short futures position held by funds since late May. This decrease was the result of more than just short-covering( buying back short futures positions) as funds increased their long futures position by 63,450 contracts from July through September while decreasing short futures during the same time by 53,270 contracts.

This is an important distinction as it indicates the noncommercial side, including long-term investors in the

October 2025 | www. FarmersHotLine. com | 31