CBOT futures, except for soybean oil, closed strongly higher and near the day’s highs, as markets rallied into the closing bell. Soybeans lagged the corn and wheat rally early in the day, but old-crop contracts surged into the close. The strong move was fueled by aggressive fund buying as they cover their short positions in corn and wheat. Corn has some fundamental support from Brazil’s removal of its import tax on corn; the dry weather threatens its corn crop.

December Corn peaked today at $4.035 which is chart resistance at the December high. Next resistance is 4.10-4.20. May Chicago Wheat peaked at the December high of $5.05. Next resistance is $5.35. July exceeded the December high and has resistance at $5.34.

The CME Group announced its semi-annual resetting of the daily price limits for its grain and oilseed contracts. Corn, wheat and soybean meal limits are unchanged: corn, $0.25 initial and $0.40 expanded; Chicago and KC wheat, $0.35 initial and $0.55 expanded; and soybean meal, $20.00 initial and $30.00 expanded. Soybean futures’ initial limit is raised from $0.60/bushel to $0.65/bushel; the expanded limit will be $1.00. This is effective on May 2, 2016.

Cattle futures closed lower and near the day’s lows on a continuation of the bearish sentiment seen this week. Some cash cattle traded well below last Friday’s price. In boxed beef, Choice gained .09 to 222.77 and Select dropped .98 to 212.96.

Lean Hog futures closed higher for the fourth straight day. 
FOB Plant Pork dropped 1.36 to 79.60 on a 9% loss in belly value. This cutout was up .40 at midday.

Corn May +10 395; Jly +10 400; Dec +6 403
Bean May +24 1010; Jly +24 1019; Nov +4 1000
Meal +14 319
Oil -14 3464
Wheat May +18 504; Jly +18 512
KC Jly +17 504; MGE +14 557 
Oats +11 207
Rice +29 1065

LC Apr -102 12630; Aug -72 11442; Oct -90 11442
FC Apr -77 14940; May -35 14542; Oct -92 14272 
LH May +102 7722; Jly +60 7987; Oct +25 6880 
Milk Apr -5 1366; May -10 1355

US$ +.5%
Dow +43 18096
SP +2 2102
NAS +8 4948
Tran +3 8109
VIX +.04 13.28

WTI +166 4274
Brent +153 4556
Gas +2 150
NG -2 207
HO +7 133
Eth +1 157
Gold unch 1253
Slvr +16 1713

2-yr +.041 0.798%
5-yr +.062 1.312%
10yr +.062 1.845%
30yr +.060 2.655%

March Milk Production up 1.8 Percent
Milk production in the 23 major States during March totaled 17.2 billion pounds, up 1.8 percent from March 2015. February revised production at 15.8 billion pounds, was up 4.6 percent from February 2015. The February revision represented an increase of 4 million pounds or less than 0.1 percent from last month's preliminary production estimate. Adjusting February production for the additional day due to leap year causes February revised production to be up 1.0 percent on a per day basis.

Production per cow in the 23 major States averaged 1,993 pounds for March, 31 pounds above March 2015. This is the highest production per cow for the month of March since the 23 State series began in 2003.

The number of milk cows on farms in the 23 major States was 8.64 million head, 19,000 head more than March 2015, and 9,000 head more than February 2016.