Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk.
Grain markets closed under pressure Wednesday, with wheat leading the selloff. Chicago soft red winter contracts finished down seventeen to nineteen cents, touching session lows at the bell. Kansas City hard red winter fell twelve to fifteen and a half cents, reflecting broad weakness across the complex with no late-session support to speak of.
Corn followed a similar path, slipping three to nearly six cents into the close, with the national average cash price settling at four dollars and eighty-one cents. A private export sale of one hundred eighty-two thousand metric tons to Mexico for two thousand twenty-six slash twenty-seven shipment offered some fundamental support, but sellers clearly had the upper hand by the final bell.
Cotton bucked the trend, with bulls staging a comeback on the session. Futures gained five to one hundred nine points across most contracts, helped along by crude oil climbing three dollars and sixty-four cents a barrel. That energy tailwind matters for cotton's input and transport costs, though crop condition ratings at thirty-four percent good to excellent — down five percentage points — remain a longer-term concern for supply.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
