This morning's grain trade is lightly mixed as it consolidates last week's gains.

The overnight grain trade was softer, as the market consolidated last week’s strong gains. Yet by morning trade was mixed at the end of the night session. The US dollar is weaker by $0.60 and back below 97.00 while gold and silver continue their risk-on recovery. Crude oil traded both sides of unchanged overnight, as Iranian tensions remain elevated, but Saudi Arabia continues to cut prices on its oil into Asia.

Tomorrow’s monthly WASDE release is unlikely to deliver much excitement. Trade expectations call for only minor adjustments to ending stocks, both domestically and on the global balance sheet. As usual in a report like this, attention will gravitate toward South American production estimates, where even small tweaks tend to matter more than U.S. changes.

In reality, the Goldman Roll is likely to influence market positioning more than the WASDE itself, as index-related flow can outweigh incremental fundamental updates. Harvest activity continues to advance across South America, but producer selling remains notably slow, particularly for soybeans. Brazilian farmer sales are running roughly seven percent behind the seasonal average. While this does nothing to alter total crop size, it does extend the window for potential U.S. export opportunities.

Trade is also watching Brazil’s safrinha corn planting pace, which has been slower than normal. That lag is not yet critical, but it remains on the radar as it could become more relevant if the weather turns less cooperative later in the season. There are more reductions expected in the Argentine corn and soybean crops due to the less than ideal weather than what’s been forecasted. The Argentine crop ratings have declined now for five weeks in a row.

The trade now looks for some flash bean sales to indicate that China will continue to do, similar to what they did last fall, and that’s just to show up and buy, not aggressively, but just consistently. It won’t be long before the conversation of China buying corn will start to build. A large portion of their corn crop last year (10% or 30 MMTs) has been turned into basically fertilizer, as blending can only go so far when you have mold and vomitoxin.

Live cattle and feeder cattle futures ended a volatile week, holding gains week over week, but not before seeing a rough trade. The cash market did produce prices in the north at $242-245, while the southern trade is at $245. Those are record prices in Kansas and Texas. Despite that, the February and April cattle board could still not close above 240. The board continues to lag, as the bull market has to climb a wall of worry. The fear of a seasonal price decline after the first quarter is widespread. Especially with more imports being found. On Friday, the deal to import Argentine beef was finalized at 100,000 MTs per year, up from 20,000 MTs in prior years before quotas when tariffs take effect. This was the topic that occurred in October and initially broke the market in the fall decline. It’s mostly old news, but it did show an increase of 20,000 MTs compared with the October revelation.

On the charts, critical support for April cattle remains 232 on a closing basis, while the March feeder cattle, which is still on the continuation chart, has the 15-day moving average at 363 that needs to be held on a closing basis. 360 on the continuation charts remains a no-go line in the sand to prevent the market from spilling into broader technical action on the board, which is always oblivious to the feeder index until the last week of the trading month.