Expected Trends For Corn, Soybeans, Oil And Gas

By James Roemer:South American drought conditions have helped soybean prices soar in the last two months. However, excellent rainfall coming to the U.S. wheat and corn belt areas could set the stage for very large U.S. crops in the coming months. The result? A potential more longer-term bearish situation for grains heading into summer. The long old crop soybean, short new crop corn spread has widened quite a bit the last few months, due to the very tight Southern Hemispheric soybean stocks situation.

Corn, soybean and wheat prices have soared lately due to poor crop estimates amid extreme drought conditions in 26 states. Let's take a look at those conditions, followed by charts of agricultural commodities The Atlantic Wire reports U.S. Declares the Largest Natural Disaster Area Ever Due to Drought

By Qineqt:In our previous article, we recommended a portfolio to play the movements in the prices of two major commodities impacted by the drought - corn and soybeans.

By James Roemer:Drought in South American was affecting the corn and soybean crops, a record warm early winter helped heating oil sell off versus gasoline prices and natural gas prices recently reached multi-year lows two weeks ago (before some energy companies announced plans to cut production). Now we have other weather problems to consider, that being, bitter near historic cold in Russia's grain belt and eastern Europe's gas-oil producing region.

T. Marc Schober submits:Yesterday afternoon, the USDA released its weekly crop progress report. The corn and soybean crop conditions both decreased in quality from last week’s report, while both crops are continuing to mature at an above average pace. The USDA estimated 71% of the corn crop is in good or excellent condition, while 10% is in poor or very poor condition, which was a 1% change from good or excellent to poor or very poor from last week.

By James Roemer: Natural Gas -- Following Weather Closely

By James Roemer:Weather is a key currently in such markets as sugar, corn, orange juice, wheat and natural gas. We have seen sugar prices and the ETF (CANE) fall to new lows, due in part to the big Brazilian sugar crop and the fact I continue to see ideal harvest weather in Brazil.

By James Roemer:After our bearish Fall attitude in corn and soybeans, due to our expectations of the "short crops have long tails" axiom and worries over the world financial situation, a developing drought in Argentina has the chance to rally corn futures at least 10% over the next few weeks. Why? Argentina and Brazil are then number 2 and number 3 exporter of corn in the world, and presently it is their summer growing season. I see a continuation of the drought expanding in most of Argentina.