02/27/23 Not As Neutral As I Used To Be

****************   Corn chart damage back in November signaled to me that something was wrong with the corn market. The recovery from the July low to the October high was disappointing. The recovery from the December low appeared corrective. The axion “short crop-long tail” was whispering in my ear despite the fundamentals seemingly being still bullish. So far, the highs were made at harvest. The corn market has gotten more bullish news (annual report) but failed to do a lot with it. Impulsive moves such as seen last week are downside in direction. I believe that there are a number of reasons for this. One is money flow. A year ago, at this time there was money flowing into commodities adding risk. Interest rates were cheap and the money supply was still expanding. The opposite is true now. Interest rates are not cheap anymore and may well rise further as the Fed quantitatively tightens, pulling money from the economy. The US dollar rose again which precious metals found plenty of reason to trade opposite the dollar. As employment and consumer spending data has outperformed expectations that means that the Fed has not succeeded in cooling inflation so will keep the…