If there was any feature this week it was long liquidation in corn and wheat. In corn, open interest fell nearly 30,000 contracts during the week.

The general consensus among traders is that the markets are oversold after this week’s slide and seem to be finding a bottom on weekly charts. Most expect the uncertainty about USDA’s March 30 planting intentions report to keep traders from getting too aggressive until then.

The March planting report has always been key to trading but it’s never had the kind of attention that it has this year.

Analysts keep releasing their latest planting estimates and the numbers are moving the markets. Informa Economics forecasts issued on Friday were viewed as friendly for corn and bearish for soybeans. The corn acres at 87.834 million weren’t as big as most traders expected. Soybean acreage at 70.384 million wasn’t as small as they thought.

For next week, traders said they’d be looking to corn for direction.

May corn failed to close about $4 a bushel . That’s not too good for the weekly charts and may trigger some more liquidation on Monday morning. On the other side, CFTC’s weekly report showed commodity funds already shed 31,000 long positions in corn in the week ended March 13.

Traders are monitoring the weakness in the U.S. cash markets, in particular soybeans and wheat. If they remain soft (as expected) that should overhang futures. That weakness doesn’t appear to be stirring much export business. Customers are turning to South America for soybeans as the Brazilian harvest is moving along and so far there have been no strikes to slow movement in Brazil.

All this said, the biggest buzz on the floor came Thursday: ICE’s near $10 billion bid for the CBOT. Traders were still chattering about it late Friday, saying “show me the money” and the like. Sounds like CME/CBOT will go ahead with a merger vote on April 4. But a floor meeting on the CME/CBOT merger is set for next week. One trader told me late on Friday: “We expect a CME higher bid ….If they don’t bid higher, then we must vote no.”

U.S. Census Bureau will put out its monthly crush data on Thursday.