It is only mid-April and it’s already a full-blown weather market in grains. Prices of corn, wheat and soybeans gyrated all week based on the latest weather forecast — a trend sure to continue that will feed market volatility.
    Warmer, drier weather in the U.S. Midwest weighed on corn prices as the week progressed. The weather change gave farmers the break they needed to complete spring field work and start planting corn, which has lagged due to a wet spring.
    Rain is forecast for next week which could stir fresh buying in corn, where a 60-year high in seedings is predicted this year to meet unprecedented demand for ethanol for fuel.
    The wheat market also moved on the latest weather stories. Reports continued to float in about how much wheat was damaged from a Easter-weekend freeze — maybe 200 million bushels, or about 10 percent of the entire U.S. wheat crop.
    The southern Plains hard red winter wheat belt could get hit by a severe storm, raising more worries about crop damage. Central and western Kansas, northwestern Oklahoma and southwestern Nebraska are the key areas seeded to HRW, which makes up 45 percent of the total U.S. wheat crop.
    So weekend weather will likely be the main driver for CBOT prices on Sunday night and Monday morning.
    The other factor that will have a big impact on Sunday night prices will be any fall-out from expiration of CBOT May options on Friday. 
    Most floor talk centered on the $3.60 strike in May corn options, with traders on edge if they were vulnerable to delivering futures positions on options they had written. May corn closed down 10-3/4 cents at $3.60-1/2 on Friday.
    Traders on Monday will also be keying on guesses about the U.S. Agricultural Department’s weekly crop progress report due on Monday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. (2100 GMT).  
    Traders expect another drop in wheat condition — down about 3 to 5 percentage points after falling 9 points in good-to-excellent category last week. Corn seeding was expected to behind, with only 13 to 17 percent planted versus the average around 22 percent by the third week in April.
    
    –Trade data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission released on Friday afternoon showed that managed funds cut their net long positions in corn, soybean oil and soybeans in the week that ended on Tuesday, April 17. Funds continued to liquidate their longs in all three markets after Tuesday, traders said. Commodity funds continued to hold a net short position in CBOT wheat as of April 17 but were likely net long now after this week’s weather-related rally, they added.
      
    –The U.S. Census Bureau issue its March crush data on Thursday.