March 24 - Stocks surged higher this morning, despite more tariff news from the White House. President Trump stated that any country currently buying oil or gas from Venezuela would have to pay a 25% tariff on any trade that it does with the United States. Yet, most stocks pushed higher on expectations that Trump will be more targeted with his reciprocal tariffs next week. The VIX is near 18 at this hour, while the dollar index is trading near 104.3. Yields on 10-year Treasuries are trading near 4.33%, while yields on 2-year Treasuries are trading near 4.03%. Crude oil prices are 1% higher on the above optimism, while the grain and oilseed sector remains mostly in the red.
We're a week away from USDA releasing the results of its quarterly grain stocks and planting intentions surveys. The stocks report is known for its surprises, and there will be particular interest in this year's March report following the agency's historical change in corn and soybean yields in January. Will this stocks report confirm those lower yields, or raise questions about them? But there continues to be wild speculation about this year's planting intentions. I'm settling on 94.4 million acres of corn this year, up from 90.6 million the previous year. I'm pegging planted soybean acreage at 84 million acres, down from 87.1 million the previous year. The risk bias is to the upside for corn acreage, and to the lower side for soybean acreage. The bottom line is that both corn and soybeans can grow stocks in the coming year with trend yields at these acreage levels, but both can also end up pretty tight if we have just a 5% drop in the national average yield due to adverse weather. That keeps this summer's Midwest weather as a factor in prices going forward. We should get a lot of tariff questions answered over the next week to 10 days, along with the stocks and acreage questions, allowing the market to focus more on weather as we move into April.
USDA inspected 57.6 million bushels of corn for export shipment in the week ending March 20, as shown below, along with 30.2 million bushels of soybeans and 17.8 million bushels of wheat. No grain sorghum was inspected for shipment during the week. We're down to the final 10 weeks roughly for the wheat marketing year, with year-to-date inspections falling short of the seasonal pace needed to hit USDA's target by 12 million bushels, although that deficit is slowly shrinking. But the more interesting story continues to be the corn and soybean shipments.
Marketing year to date corn export inspections total 1.270 billion bushels, up 308 million bushels or 32% from the previous year's pace. But more importantly, year-to-date inspections exceed the seasonal pace needed to hit USDA's target by 195 million bushels, up from 193 million bushels the previous week. We saw a big surge in inspections two weeks prior, with the numbers now backing off somewhat. So does that mean that shippers were rushing to get corn moved before the April 2nd tariff announcements? That may be the case. We're also still waiting for details on the new fee schedule for shippers utilizing Chinese flagged and/or constructed ships. There are some rumors that implementation of that policy will be moved back six months, but it remains a big unknown for the markets. Marketing year to date soybean export inspections total 1.467 billion bushels, up 124 million bushels or 9% from the previous year's pace. The total also comes in 74 million bushels above the seasonal pace needed to hit USDA's target, up from 66 million bushels the previous week. We've seen an uptick in shipments of previously purchased soybeans to China in recent weeks. It's believed that these are primarily Sinograin purchases for China's reserves that it is getting shipped before the fees increase.
