I want to speak a bit about the stretching that is taking place in the stock market.  Today, I am not speaking about commodities per se, but markets in general and stocks.  I touched on this briefly on the May 31 post about cycles.  Lets apply this idea now to the stock market.  The chart below shows that the stock market range as of late has been 410 points above the 200 week moving average.

We have been that stretched before....back in the late 90's.  That market ran at a Ultimately, that did not end well.round 410 points for nearly two years.  Ultimately, it did not end well.

Just like a rubber band, the more stretched the market gets, the stronger the reactionary move in the market.  Following the massive sell of of the great recession, we have experienced the greatest cyclical bull market of all time!

I have mentioned numerous times that the bread and butter of professional traders is buying oversold assets and dumping overbought assets.  This is called the "Regression To The Mean Rule".   This is a principal among traders, that liquidity eventually finds its way into undervalued assets.  Likewise, liquidity will eventually find its way out of overvalued assets.  The pros have mastered the art of staying in these positions longer than any other person such as myself believes possible.  It is agonizing for us who are on the sidelines of such trades to watch.  At some point, we decide we need to participate, which is about the time the pro's decide to move on, leaving us dealing with large losses because we entered late.

Like I had mentioned earlier, this post has nothing to do with grains per se, but this is how the process works.

So, where will this liquidity go when the market turns south?  Consider the chart below. 
(You will need to zoom.  If you cannot, try this link and scroll to the bottom.)

I did not realize that I had last mentioned the carryout spreadsheet back in February.  Allow me to demonstrate a few things that could be revealed upon the June WASDE report coming out on June 12.  This is how the spreadsheet looked following the March planting intentions report.  The current crop year is in the section in the middle of the spreadsheet, with last years numbers on top, and next years projected numbers on the bottom.   You can see that there is a huge build up of the carry-out in both corn and soybeans from this year to next year.

On Monday,  the USDA said in a weekly report that planting progress was the slowest for corn and soybeans at this point in the year since 1996.  That would be 17 years.  Reuters polled 14 analysts for revised projections and found that on average, they expect acreage to be reduced from 97.3 million acres to 95.1 million.  The analyst also projected the U.S. Soybean planted area to be 78.2 million acres, up 1.1 million acres.

The analysts also gave the corn conditions ratings the lowest rating since 2002.  There was not a yield forecast given, but for comparison purposed, lets make the assumption that yields will be reduced 5% on corn and soybeans.  That would have the corn yield at 142.5 bu and the bean yield at 39.9.

These numbers would result in the change to the spreadsheet as reflected below.

Nobody knows where these numbers will ultimately land.  The yield number could change just as much as the planted acres number over the next month.  There is still a buildup on the corn, but this would not result in a devastating buildup in the carryout.  I cannot foresee such a scenario giving us $4.50 corn on its own without some help from a surging dollar.

One final note....Morgan Stanly estimated the 2013 corn planting at 93.5 acres.  If that number holds true, the corn carry-out would drop to 910.